Cigarettes

The Government was concerned that keeping cannabis at class C gave the wrong signal about the drug.

Cannabis has greatly increased in strength in recent years, with skunk, the strongest form, now making up 80 per cent of the street drug compared to just 30 per cent in 2002.

This is the form causing most concern over mental health risks. But however the drug is classed, it’s important to understand how it may affect you.

Mental illness
Last year, studies found that frequent cannabis use increased risk of serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia by 40 per cent. The younger you are when you smoke cannabis, the worse its potential effects on your brain as it’s still developing.

Lung damage
Just one joint can be as damaging as five cigarettes online. That’s because there’s no filter, and the smoke is hotter and usually inhaled deeper and for longer, causing more damage to airways. That means there’s a greater risk of lung cancer than with plain old free cheap cigarettes.

Heart attack
Cannabis speeds up the heart rate by about 40 beats a minute and also increases blood pressure. US research shows your heart attack risk increases by almost five times within an hour of taking the drug.

Accident risk
Cannabis stays in your system for days, affecting short-term memory, concentration and ability to drive or operate machinery, increasing accident risk.

Fertility
It harms the quality and quantity of a man’s sperm.
Smoking while you’re pregnant is associated with an increased risk of stillbirth, miscarriage and birth abnormalities.

She asked how many students knew someone who smoked and almost every hand in the room shot up.

To illustrate their point about the dangers of smoking, the duo hooked a pig lung up to an air pump to demonstrate a healthy lung. They also brought several photos, a model with a smoker and nonsmoker’s lung and a slide show of detailed photos of what smoking does to the body.

Several students shuddered at the graphic pictures.

A few students said they felt sick after seeing a picture of an amputated foot that was lost because arteries and blood vessels pumping blood to the appendage were destroyed from the chemicals in the smoker’s cigarettes.

“I had no idea that smoking could do that,” Adrian Protzman said. “Especially to your feet and your brain.”

“Smoking affects much more than your lungs,” Crumrine said to the group. “We see this all the time in the hospital. Usually, by the time a smoker finds out they have something seriously wrong with their body, it has spread to other areas.”

They also used a “smoking box” to demonstrate how much smoke and tar is released from one cigarette.

“Yuck,” Jordan Ryan said. “That’s really gross.”

As the students walked out of the cafeteria, many commented on how they wanted to call their parents and other loved ones to tell them what they had learned and encourage them to stop.

“We hear that a lot after these presentations,” Crumrine said. “At this age, you have to give them all the information you can to prepare them and hope that the information is enough to keep them from smoking.”