"What children don't realise is that marijuana is a gateway drug. It's the doorway to higher drugs.. says Suneel Vatsyayan

Doctor, have you tried marijuana?"
"No"
"Then how do you know it is bad?"

Brahmdeep Sindhu, senior psychiatrist at the Civil Hospital in Gurgaon, was stumped when a 14-year-old from a prominent school threw this question at him. "The child then went to great lengths, quoting blogs he had read on the internet, to convince me why he, many of his classmates and some of his juniors, children as young as 12, thought it was harmless, even beneficial, to smoke up."

Every month, 15 to 20 new cases of schoolchildren, boys and girls, are brought by their parents to Sindhu for counselling. They are all hooked to cannabis: oftenmarijuana (the leaf of the plant) and sometimes hashish (extracted from the plant's resin).

Far away from Gurgaon, in the fields past Navi Mumbai, children, in school uniform, can occasionally be seen purchasing weed that is grown here, hidden from the authorities by the other crop growing around it. With prices as low as Rs 50 to Rs 100 a pop, it is hardly out of reach for these kids.

In Bengaluru, Gambetta da Costa, co-founder of drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre Higher Power Foundation, is dealing with an unprecedented number of 10- to 16-year-olds who are doing cannabis and party drugs. "We take in 25 people at the most. Today, at least 10 of them, or 40 per cent, are children from primary and high school," he says.

The harsh reality is that an increasing number of boys and girls, some as young as 11, are experimenting with cannabis which also goes by names like weed, pot, grass, herb and boom. Medicinal drugs and smelling agents like whiteners and nail paint removers that give a high are losing out to marijuana.

More than parents, schoolteachers and classmates are the ones to notice the changes first that take place in a child high on marijuana. "A perfectly normal child will suddenly stop caring about his appearance, his eyes will be red and his expression aloof," says Laxmi Prasad Jaiswal, senior counsellor at Yuva, a toll-free helpline run by the Delhi government for students, parents and teachers. He puts the age of initiation into marijuana at as low as 9.

Teachers have observed children addicted to marijuana dropping out of sports and their friends' circle changing. "It's like they are in some kind of a zone, a world of their own, instantly happy or totally distracted," says Swati Marwah, a college student many of whose schoolmates had started smoking weed by the time they were in Class IX or X.

This is dangerous: marijuana impairs the person's cognitive abilities and its long-term use damages the brain irreversibly. Most children start with the belief that they can opt out anytime, which is easier said than done.

The argument that children most often present in support of cannabis is that it is not a drug. "How can something that comes from a plant and is organic be a drug?" says a 15-year-old. "Would responsible adults have it if it were harmful?" His reference is to bhang, another form of cannabis, which will be consumed in copious amounts in households next week on Holi.

Other arguments in their arsenal, thanks to the internet, include the old assertion that every year more people die from alcohol than cannabis, and that marijuana is legal in some parts of the US.
"What children don't realise is that marijuana is a gateway drug. It's the doorway to higher, stronger and more dangerous drugs," says Suneel Vatsyayan, psychotherapist and director of Delhi-based Nada India Foundation that works on child-related issues. A child hooked to marijuana will eventually get bored of its subtle effects and will want to move to something harder like cocaine or heroin.

Vijay Simha, an independent therapist in Delhi, is dealing with one such case: a 19-year-old heroin addict who started with marijuana when he was in Class VII. Now, while he is getting weaned away from heroin, he still smokes a joint of marijuana every night before going to sleep. "'Marijuana to nasha hi nahin hai (marijuana isn't a drug),' he tells me," says Simha....http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/heady-childhood-116031801129_1.html