Cannabis

What is cannabis?

The Cannabis sativa plant is in "every day" languages called hamp, and the name Cannabis sativa means useful hemp. I would not call cannabis useful though, I would rather call it useless and dangerous. It is the flowers of the hamp plant that are containing cannabinoider. Cannabinoider are psychoactive substances. The most important (strongest) one is THC, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. It is the proportion of THC that determines the strength of the drug and it varies between different species of hamp plants.

Different sorts of cannabis (the most comment ones)

Bhang

It is made of dried leaves and flowers broken up in water and than drunk. The THC consents are 1-2 %.

Marijuana

Made of dried leaves and flowers that are smoked. The THC consents are 1-3 %.

Ganja, sinsemilla

Consists of little top leaves and flowers from the female plant and are also smoked. The THC consents are 5-10 %.

Hasch

Is made of pure resin from the top leaves of the hamp plant that are pressed into cakes. Hash is smoked in pipes or cigarettes, so called joints. The THC contains is 8-15 %.

Hasch oil

Hasch oil is brown, treacle-like oil that is extracted from the plants. The oil is dropped on tobacco and it is usually smoked in cigarettes. The THC consents are 40-60 %.

What does cannabis consist of?

Cannabis contains 420 different constituents. THC is the strongest of the about 80 different cannabiodes. The cannabiodes dissolve in fat, which makes the organs store them. This does so that the person who has taken the drug will get so called flashbacks. Flashbacks are very dangerous because one can never apprehend when it will happen.

What happens when you take the drug?

Some people say that the surrounding makes a big difference for the grades of the effects. When you take the drug you will first get a little bit dizzy and after that you feel happiness, relaxed and that you’ve got an increased self-confidence. The sense of time will change and the time seems to go slow or stop. The perception of both your own body and the surrounding changes, colours shift and subjects shrink or grow. The short period memory will change for the worse and so will also your attention. The ability to reflect gets worse, and also will the ability to judge distances. Cannabis is very deadly and poisonous in large doses.

Cannabis and traffic

There are a lot of psychological functions that deteriorate when you are high on cannabis. This makes a person not appropriate as a driver. The ability to concentrate and the attention deteriorated tremendously. There have been done a lot of different car simulations, and they all showed that the ability to drive is deteriorated, for at least two hours after taking about 10-15 mg THC. Some experiments have also showed that the ability to drive remains reduced even after the experiment person considers himself to be sober.

What can we learn from this? That we never should take drugs, of course, and that the persons that do take drugs never should get into a car before they are certain that they are under none effect, what so ever, by drugs.

Cocaine

Cocaine is produced from the coca bush leaves. It is often to be sniffed, and it than consist in form of a white powder. One person that claimed that you should be using cocaine, was Sigmund Freud. He said that it was useful for depressions, he is said to have been using it himself. Now, however, we know how much damages cocaine, and other drugs, do to your brain and body. One may wonder why there are still persons that continue to use them, in spite of all this knowledge.

How is cocaine taken?

You can:

• chew coca leaves
• inject cocaine solution
• smoke crack (chemical pure cocaine)
• sniff powder

What does cocaine do to your body?

The nerve-cells will get bombed with stimulating impulses and this continues until they are so "tired" that they are not able to react to all of the signals. The pupils gets bigger, that is one way how you can see if a person is affected by cocaine or if he/she is high on something else. The cocaine goes directly into the nerve system where it disturbs vital functions in the brain and causes a lot of damages.

Why should you not drive if you are under influence of cocaine?

When you take cocaine you feel very high and happy, more awake, unbeatable and that your self-confidence increases. But after an hour the effects are gone and you will feel agony, distress and unconcentrated. This is a so-called crash. Imagine this; a person is taking some cocaine, after this the person feels that he would like to take a ride (in his new car). He is feeling undefeatable and he does not care about the other cars, neither about the laws. A little girl is testing her new bicycle and she sways-and there comes the druged man in his car...

Or, he can be having a crash, witch makes him feel a desperate need to have more cocaine so he does not pay enough attention to the road.

Opium, morphine and heroin (opiodes

Raw opium is extended from the opiepoppy, papaver somniferum. Opium contains morphine, noskapin, codeine, papaverin and thebaine. Opium is used to make morphine, heroin and codeine.

Heroine (C₂₁H₂₃NO₅)

Heroine is a fast-working morphine and it gives the user a kick. It also creates a very big dependency for the user. When you take heroin you can eat it, drink it, smoke it or inject it. Heroin dissolves in fat and reaches therefore the central nerve system faster than the most of the drugs.

Morphine

Morphine is the most powerful pain-relieving remedy that we have. When you take morphine it makes you feels very good and very happy. You can also feel sick and vomit, and the pupils shrink to.

How it affects the body

When you take opiodes you feel like as if you were flying in a cloud. It calms down the pain and the agony. The risk of taking an overdos is very high. There is also a risk that the abuser stops breathing. It is common to feel sick and to vomit.

The risk of driving affected by opiodes

If anyone would be so stupid as to drive affected by heroine, he would not get so very far. The opiodes makes so that you will get totally confused, your grip of the reality would be very vague. The driver would not have any control over, neither himself nor the car or the situation. As you surely can see, is would be very devastating and stupid to drive under the influence by opiodes, or by any kind of drugs.

How common are drugs among young people? (In Sweden)

The static shows that 6 % of the boys in the ninth grade have tried some kind of drugs in the year of 1995. The same year had 5 % of the girls in the ninth grade tried drugs. 1995; 6 % of the boys has had the desire to try drugs and 8 % of the girls.

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