Doctor Joan Colom
Public Health Department, Generalitat de Cataluny
Public Health Department, Generalitat de Catalunya
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Admin Where and when do they do that? We usually asociate drugs to parties and weekends. Do they also consume on a daily basis at school, breaks, going out of school?
Usually, the most consumed drug among young peole is marijuana, and yes, we have detected that there is a subgroup of population that can consume, not actually inside the school, but before classes and specially after them. We are particularly worried about that, since after a certain consumption frequency this kind of drugs start to affect with an amotivational syndrome, a syndrome that implies concentration difficulties, memory difficulties, and as a consecuence - poor school performance.
It is worrysome when a boy smokes before entering the school - that would mean that his consumption level is high. One thing is to consume probably in the way it was done years ago - in a certain entertainment environment and sharing the drugs, and it is a completely different thing when a young person consumes his own drugs - it is a whole new level of consumption. But adequately I will not dare to generalize, since it is one particular sub-group we are talking about here, not something normal.
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All this and pleasure. When one is young, he/she does not have, or has few times, a sensaton of danger, and this is precisely one of the traits of the youth - an absence of danger perception. Young people always for a relationship system, a personal identity space, a space where they would not be influenced by their parents, schools, etc. y the already mentioned susbtances fit rith into this environment. The big problem is that these substances have a certain effect and when this effect is over, the individual finds himself without that substance and with even more bad feeling than before - that is the main problem of drugs.
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Drugs are a dynamic phenomena that has been changing along the time. Different times go on, and the drug type popular at a certain point depends on the kind of social-cultural context that is lived in a precise moment, depending on the prices, markets and effects produced by these drugs. For instance, there was a considerable epidemy of heroin use in the 70's which generated a very dramatic dynamics that, among other consquences, has contributed to the AIDS spreading, which in turn has given us high mortality rates. In the 80's the substance of choice has radically changed, probably being the adverse effects of heroin the reason for that; the environment has turned very competitive, more of “here and now” kind, and cocaine has fitting there better. In the 90's, in the middle of the entertainment times, sinthetic drugs (designer drugs) had a very important impact, for these were the drugs that pretended to augment the awareness condition and had to go along with a compulsive kind of dancing. “The fish route”, that is how it was called – the going from a disco to disco, from a music bar to music bar, dancing without stopping under the effects of this stimulant substance, with some more or less halucigenic component.
During all these years, all this drug consumption went along with an important alcohol consumption, that has also changed. In the 70's it was caracterized more by high consumption frequency, less consumption and few degrees that has evolved into a weekend consumption, with larger cuantities and intensity, but less frequent. Moreover, during all these years there has also been a very important consumption of cannabis and its derivatives, a consumption that has been very relevant among the young population. And finally, in the middle of the historical secuence of drug consumption that we have mentioned, other substances of smaller sub-groups have been appearing and disappearing, like, for example, ketamine, liquid extasis and other amphetanitic substances.
Therefore, if you ask me what the young people prefer, my answer is that the interests change over time, and for this reason the substances are different. There is a large variety of consumptions, but it is obvious that the tobacco, alcohol, cannabis and cocain are the favourite drugs among young people nowadays.
And finally, I would like to outline that not all young people have risly behaviour, not everydoby who goes out at night consumes, and that not everyone who consumes does so in an extreme way.
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Usually, the young people initiate consuming between 14 and 18 years. Initiate means to try and experiment, and it is a different story if there is some kind of continuation later on. There are differences, that we have been acknowledging through the time, between those who are exposed to a substance, and those who stay addicted, which we call protection and risk factors. A person with the full package of protection factors, although not completely invulnerable, will have more resistance and resilience capacities than a person with a full package of risk factors. We know all that through an epidemic study and a posterior detection of different differential straits, specific to certain persons who did not have such a problem and who did have those, taking as a result a set of elements that could be considered as risk and protection factors. So the young people initiate drug consumption at the age of 14 and 18 years, with some changes that we have been tracking during the last few years. For instance, we have observed that marijuana probably accompanies or substitutes tobacco in the classic transition from infancy to youth. Fortunately, in this transgressive process, we have found out that the comsumption of marijuana has decreased (at some time of the last month we reached a 30% of population of this age consuming this kind of drug, but luckily it has decreased to a 22-23% level).
One interesting fact that we discovered, is that the girls consume practically as much as boys, and they initiate at the same time – something, that was not the same 30 years ago. Nevertheless, after some consumption time they start to consume less, and they even start to tutor their boyfriends if they have one. That is what we call sex consumption, and it is very important for us from a preventive point of view. That is what happens with all kinds of drugs, excepting tobacco, which the girls keep on smoking on the same level as the boys.
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