Skunk- a new virulent cancer of crime on our streets and in our communities!

Today record numbers of young people are in treatment programmes for skunk abuse and hospital admissions due to the drug are at their highest ever.

An increase in the strength of the drug and widespread use among Britain's teenagers has the potential to be a disaster, according to experts, who say that the young are at most risk of developing psychosis and schizophrenia.

A boom in the amount of super-strength cannabis being used by the estimated one and a half million Britons who smoke it each year has been mirrored by a massive rise in people suffering from mental health problems because of it. Figures from the NHS National Treatment Agency show that more than 22,000 cannabis users are in drug treatment programmes - almost half of whom are under 18. Compare that to Department of Health figures showing 1,660 cannabis users entering treatment programmes in the six months ending March 1997. In addition, the overall proportion of cannabis users of the total who are in treatment for drug problems has shot up from 6 per cent to 12 per cent over the past decade.

The number of people having to go to NHS hospitals suffering from cannabis-related mental and behavioural disorders has also risen sharply in last five years - from 581 in 2001 to almost 1,000 last year.

The scale of the problem has prompted calls by doctors, politicians and addicts for a rethink on the way we view cannabis, after a succession of reports have stated that it is less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. A new independent UK drug policy commission, chaired by Dame Ruth Runciman is being launched next month, and will call for a total rethink of the government's approach.

"Society has seriously underestimated how dangerous cannabis really is," says Professor Neil McKeganey, from Glasgow University's Centre for Drug Misuse Research. "I think we are faced with a generation blighted by the effects of cannabis use."

A cannabis joint today may contain 10 to 20 times more THC than the equivalent joint in the 1970s. A decade ago only 11 per cent of cannabis sold in the UK was grown here but now the figure has passed 60 per cent. And while the strength has increased, the price has dropped. Cannabis now sells for £43 per ounce on average, a big drop from the 1994 average price of £120 per ounce.

Robin Murray, professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, says that one-quarter of people are particularly at risk, having a five times higher risk of psychosis if they smoke cannabis. The drug is known to increase the production of dopamine in the brain, an excess of which produces the hallucinations characteristic of schizophrenia.

"The people we are seeing who are now in their twenties started using cannabis eight to 10 years ago," he says. "But the people now starting are starting on skunk. The number of people taking cannabis may not be rising but what people are taking is much more powerful - so there is a question of whether a few years on we may see more people getting ill as a consequence of that. We'll just have to wait and see."

Research to be published in this week's Lancet will show how cannabis is more dangerous than LSD and ecstasy. Experts analysed 20 substances for addictiveness, social harm and physical damage. The results, which will show many illegal drugs being less harmful than alcohol and tobacco, will increase the pressure on the Home Office to reform the existing ABC system of classification.

This comes just months after Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN's anti-drugs office, said: "The harmful characteristics of cannabis are no longer that different from those of other plant-based drugs such as cocaine and heroin."

Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry are looking at the relationship between the active ingredients of cannabis and whether it causes psychosis by increasing dopamine levels in the brain. Fifteen patients are involved in the study, where they are given the drug and then have their brains scanned. Initial findings show that those given THC show higher levels of brain dopamine than those who have a placebo.

But others argue that the evidence for cannabis's damaging effects shows an association between the drug and psychosis, but not that one is the cause of the other. The more likely explanation for the link, they claim, is that people who are in the early stages of mental illness may turn to drugs including cannabis as a form of self-medication. Michael Linnell, the director of communications for the drugs charity Lifeline, argues: "No drug use is completely safe and yet despite the anti-cannabis propaganda on the telly and the distortion of the truth in the press, cannabis is and remains by far the safest drug on the planet."

In January 2004, when David Blunkett was Home Secretary, cannabis was downgraded from class B to class C, meaning that possession of small quantities of the drug was no longer an arrestable offence. The decision was taken on the recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

But last month Superintendent Leroy Logan, the deputy borough commander in Hackney, east London, said reclassification of the drug had led to "extensive and expansive" use among youngsters, increasing mental health problems and triggering a "paranoid mistrust" of the police and anyone in authority.

A "positive arrest policy" in central Brixton has resulted in hundreds of arrests since December 2005, and police claim to have seen a 35 per cent reduction in the crime rate in the area. But one chief inspector, who spoke under condition of anonymity, admits that they are struggling to control the problem. "There's still a widespread public misconception that cannabis is legal now and it makes our life very difficult. Skunk is a dangerous drug. This is a huge social problem and we're like the doctors treating the symptoms."

There could be a cannabis factory in your street! Watch out for these signs: windows blanked out, unsociable occupants (sometimes Vietnamese), comings and goings late at night, large amounts fo electrical equipment being moved in.

Keep your eyes open. Make it your business to know who the house is rented to and who the landlord is!