A British man has called for skunk, a potent form of cannabis, to be reclassified as a Class A drug after his son attacked his mother and severed his own penis before being detained under the mental act for his own safety.
The father, identified only as Nick, described his son’s psychotic break during an interview with BBC Radio 5 live. He believes skunk is the direct cause of the episode.
Nick said he supports the “war on skunk” initiated by British aristocrat Lord Monson earlier this year following the death of his 21 year old son, who took his own life in what his father believes is another skunk-induced mental break.
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Nick said his son became “completely addicted” to the drug after boredom drove him to start trying it with his friends. He said his son then became “delusional and he used to sleep with a tennis racket in his bed because he thought people were living in the walls.”
“He became paranoid. He switched from a very bright, bubbly lad to – I can only describe it as a waste of space,” he added.
Describing the incident in which he attacked his mother and mutilated himself as both “devastating” and “surreal,” the boy’s father said his son “basically had a psychotic episode and did huge amounts of harm to both himself and his mother.”
As a result, he was placed in a mental health institute for assessment for a “five, six month period.” The father now feels like he has his son back and says his son has now developed a sense of dark humor about the incident, though he still has a long road to recovery both physically and mentally.
Following the tragic death of his own son, Lord Monson said that decriminalizing certain forms of cannabis would enable users to know what they are smoking, ensuring they would not fall victim to cannabis-induced psychosis.
“That is no different from our approach to alcohol,” he said, adding that “No one needs to drink moonshine whisky which makes them blind, they can buy legal whiskey.”
