From booze to wooze : A study on how school staff perceive pupils attitude to drugs in two municipalities

The aim for this study is to examine how school personnel perceive adolescents attitude towards drugs and narcotics in general and, in this case, cannabis in particular over a time period of about eleven years. The study focuses on two smaller municipalities to determine whether the previous big city problems of drugs now also effects smaller cities. In the light of a world where cannabis has been liberalized in many countries, both in Europe and America, the question rises of how this will affect the Swedish youth and the Swedish schools. By the two cases examined in this study, one can determine that cannabis has been liberalized in the sense of it being more accepted among the adolescents even if the amount of people using not has risen notably during the examined period. This raises the question what this means for the school personnel, such as mentors, principals and school nurses. In the two cases examined in this study we can determine that the biggest difference in their case is how you must talk to the students about cannabis and how you must present the dangers of using it. Earlier it seems to have been easier to motivate a student not to smoke by mostly talking about how it affects your health negatively. Today, according to some of the respondents, the teachers and other personnel has to be more prepared to face counterargument from students concerning the use of cannabis and whether it is dangerous or not.