Swiss youths smoke most dope in Europe

national | miscellaneous | news report

Monday November 22, 2004 14:46

by Paul Kinsella - CPSU An Post Branch Committee

paulkinsella53 at yahoo dot com

53 Lorcan Grove, Santry, Dublin 9, Eire

085-1478100

Now we have it confirmed from the horse's mouth! Swiss teenagers smoke more cannabis than their peers in every other European country, a survey has said, casting a pall over the country's prim and wholesome image. One in three Swiss 15-year-olds has lit up a joint within the past year, while the number of teenagers regularly smoking or getting drunk rose 10 percent between 1998 and 2002, the Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse said in their survey.

"For a large number of young people, falling back on alcohol, cigarettes or cannabis is part of a response to growing social pressures and a failure to engage with the future," survey leader Holger Schmid said in a statement on Thursday. Britain and Spain trailed Switzerland as the top cannabis consumers, while British and Scandinavian teenagers stood out for "drinking in order to get drunk", the survey of children aged 11-15 in more than 30 European countries showed. Dispelling the image of the Netherlands as a haven of hash-lovers, young people in this country showed only an average level of cannabis use. Do you notice something? Yes! Ireland is missing! Thus dispelling the myth that Irish teenagers are a bunch of drunk, stoned wasters that you in the media have pedelling for the last few years. I demand that you issue an unreserved apology to the teenagers of Ireland. What about all of the teenagers who care about and who want a better world and better still those involved in social causes and activism such as the environmental and green movements and the Anti war movements to name but a few? Oh I forgot! That's why so many of your right wing conservative journalists regularly castigate young people. Just because you see young people as a threat to your cosy right wing consensus, and do you know something? You are right! But no matter how much you castigate teenagers and young people you will not shut or terrify or threaten or cower or intimidate us into silence. "A new world is possible!"