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These are all reality stories of teenagers who are still tempted to be denied not only by themselves, the parents who give them pockets, but also by the schools, who are more comfortable believing that the drug problem does not exist. at your institution.
A study released across Europe by the Department of Drug, Tobacco and Alcohol Control (NTAKD) on Monday shows that up to 19 percent. The 15-16 year old students surveyed had tried drugs at least 1 or 2 times, of which 21% were boys and 18%. girls. They do not do it out of the desire to commit a crime, to break the law, but simply out of curiosity.
Adolescents themselves say that it is easy for them to buy drugs. The director of the NTAKD prof. Dr. According to Renalds Čiužas, even 24 percent. surveyed students claim to have easy access to cannabis.
“The supply is even possible in the schoolyard. There are intermediaries, distributors. A package is left under the windowsill and money is left there to pay for the service, ”said R. Čiužas about the ingenuity of drug distributors and consumers.
For physicians who have previously come across a group of classical drugs, the emergence of synthetic materials is of great concern. Although there is a tendency to “revert” to the use of “traditional” psychotropic substances in both Europe and Lithuania, the low price and availability of synthetic substitutes make them their own: synthetic cannaboids are currently the most popular on the market. Substances are mixed, counterfeit drugs are used, causing even greater harm to health and even life-threatening.
Most of the students surveyed indicated that they used mixtures of smoked herbs and substances in the form of liquids, to a lesser extent substances in the form of powders, crystals or tablets.
New materials are harder to identify
Toxicologist Robertas Badaras admitted that statistics on the use of psychotropic substances in Lithuania concern him as a doctor.
“In some positions we are above the European average, but there are positions in which we are leaders, for example, the use of electronic cigarettes. Everyone “knows” that it is “very good”. But there are many studies that show that it is e-cigarettes that are used not only for the use of legal fillers, but also for illegal substances, including synthetic cannabinoids. According to this indicator, Lithuania ranks first in the 15-16 age segment, “taught R. Badaras.
According to the toxicologist, it is quite difficult to identify a person who is beginning to use the new substances. “If classic materials give a clear ‘clinic’ very quickly, then new materials can go unnoticed for a long time. Especially for teenage parents, the truth seems so intimidating that it is better not to see it, ”said the doctor.
Although not so intense, the symptoms of the use of new psychotropic substances are the same as in the case of the classics: mood changes, day and night regimen, attention, concentration, decreased concentration, a circle of new acquaintances appears, the old habitual interests. disappear.
“Little by little, as if by accident, there is a shortage of money. Clearly, compared to the classic materials that have eaten large financial flows, the new ones are cheaper and this increases their relative availability.
Its supply is large. European Observatory since 2002 has counted 790 new substances. If there were 6-8 classical materials, now we are talking about 800 materials. We don’t have much opportunity to verify them, ”said the toxicologist.
Accessories, like from a horror movie
According to the specialist, the tsunami, the feeling of fear and disorder, is becoming a little more serious, the doctors are getting used to it a bit. New substances are emerging, but new groups are not, the main groups of substances remain.
A return to classical materials is being observed across Europe. And consumers themselves have seen how experiments with innovation can end.
“Additives such as rat poison are found in these substances, with 5 deaths reported. There has long been speculation about the purpose of mixing them, and the truth turned out to be very pragmatic: By adding rats to synthetic cannabinoids, they stay in the body longer, “Badar said.
Another worrying trend is the classic one, the more, the more often illegal additives are added. Cannabis, according to a toxicologist, began to be counterfeited in the first decade of this century: it is very cheap and useful for manufacturers.
“A plant of any quality is sprayed with a synthetic substance that acts on the same receptors and gets the effect you want. But, intentionally or unintentionally, forget that unlike plant cannabinoids, synthetic cannabinoids sometimes stick to receptors in such a way that the receptor is stimulated until it dies.
The effects are estimated to be up to 100 times stronger in some sources. There have been very painful and even fatal complications precisely because synthetic cannabinoids have been used, ”said the toxicologist.
Some people use synthetic cannabinoids thinking they have bought a natural product, others deliberately. Related hemorrhagic strokes occur in Lithuania before the age of twenty.
See demons and angels
The priest Kęstutis Dvareckas, initiator of social projects and leader of the “I am” community, helps people, including young people, to get out of the vicious cycle of addictions.
K. Dvareckas lamented that the problem of addictions is often avoided, only deepening it.
“Not only do parents of teenagers want to deny the problem, we often hear that denial from the people who depend on them, from their environment and, sometimes, even at the institutional level. We have to deal with institutions that say: “In our school, in the gym, this problem does not exist.” Then the question arises as to whether this gym continues to operate in the same country where we live.
Acknowledging the truth makes it easy to find the right tools. Then we can make the right decisions. We waste a lot of time, energy and resources on makeup, images, after which we have a silent fear and hope that it will all end here, ”said K. Dvareckas.
K. Dvareckas, who works with social projects, is more frightened by the fact that young people come with a myriad of disorders, where they don’t even know how to help properly. With older drug users, it becomes more clear how the processes work.
“Consumers of new psychoactive substances often do not come alone, but with their so-called friends, whose voices are heard, they come with all sorts of additional insights, sometimes religious in nature.
Not long ago, a mother who was very concerned about her two children called. They say that I want to take my two children with you somehow. I said they had to love it first. Furthermore, we cannot accept both, there are other communities, it is healthier for both brothers to be received in different ways.
Then my mother says: I want first the oldest who sees the demons, because the youngest sees the creatures of the sky, for him a little calmer. This is how you understand the strange and painful world that people live in, ”said K. Dvareckas.
According to the priest, only determined and consistent efforts help to get rid of addictions. There are no quick fixes here: your search drives us to witchcraft, so-called treatments, incantations that don’t work.
