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FEW of us know children who haven't "broken the rules" at some stage. It's part of the growing-and-learning process that ideally leads eventually to wise and responsible adulthood. Part of that rule-breaking in today's society is cannabis use - it's easy to get hold of, and many teenagers take the view that it's not destructive, isn't hurting anyone, and that it's an enjoyable activity to engage in with a few friends.

Teenagers generally don't acknowledge any parallels between what they're doing, and "hard drugs" - yet none of the street-wise kids who got hooked on heroin or crack cocaine would have deliberately *chosen* that way of life, and this is the single fact which seems to escape so many kids who "chill out" with cannabis from time to time.

What made the difference, what helped to suspend the "rational judgment" which would otherwise have got those kids who became addicts, out of trouble? Ask any of today's teenagers and their view is that addiction is something that happens to "other people" - they *know* they themselves are level-headed enough to avoid anything they would regard as more dangerous substances. As indeed they are, when they're enclosed within the safety-barriers which the inherent structure of society provides.

So what *does* make the difference, what provides the bridge between supposedly-harmless cannabis use and the hard drugs which ravage bodies and ruin lives? Because none of those keyed-in teenagers is going to deliberately make that "flying leap" between safety and lunacy [because even *they* know it's lunacy], without some other factor being involved.

These days, cannabis use is increasingly "acceptable" in society generally ... and any parent who is quietly confident that their own child would *never* be persuaded to try anything is probably a parent who could do with opening their eyes a little wider.

If it stopped there, if teenagers "just" smoked cannabis, on occasion, as their own private stance against the rules, and nothing ever went any further, maybe we would have a relatively-tolerable overall situation; at any rate far fewer problems than we have now.

But kids are *vulnerable* when they're "lean" [the current buzz-word for the effects of the drug] - probably equally vulnerable after an Ecstasy tablet or a few of the popular spirit mixers on the market these days - but the especial danger of cannabis or any other drug not available from pharmacists, is the way it has to be supplied.

Downgrading the criminal classification of cannabis when it can still *only* be bought from drug dealers means that any child using it has in all probability *already* made that contact - and is vulnerable every single time he or she does so.

When rational judgment is suspended by the drug - and cannabis makes its users oh-so-happy, malleable, stress-free - those same street-wise kids are easy prey for the heavier drug dealers. A stronger substance which they wouldn't touch with a bargepole in their usual alert frame of mind might not seem so dangerous when they're "lean" - and all of a sudden that child is caught-in-the-cage, powerless, trapped by a physical dependency over which they have little or no control.

Prisons are overflowing with genuinely-nice kids who got trapped this way, ensnared into an underworld in which they don't belong. Cemeteries bear witness to those who didn't make it through; all too many drug dealers on the streets - and the people who engage in other activities not acceptable to society - started their life of "crime" this way.

Our high-tech modern world is peopled with untold numbers of child-catchers, many of whom got trapped in the role they play by exactly the same means. Kids don't start out "bad" - ask any parent - but we need to find better ways of protecting children - *all* children - to give them a better chance of making it safely through.

Our elected politicians make the rules - but they don't seem to have thought through all the ramifications of the situation they have created. It's time they did so.

© Project HappyChild - linking children all across the world - http://www.happychild.org.uk

© Project HappyChild 23.07.02. This article may be freely published in any media without payment, provided only that it is reproduced in full, unchanged and with copyright and website address included, and a copy forwarded to us by e-mail within 21 days of first usage.