Students create 'Spliffs and Ladders' game

STUDENTS in Nottingham are to highlight the dangers of cannabis by giving out a "Spliffs and Ladders" board game in the city.

The game – printed on the back of a leaflet resembling a Rizla packet – has been developed by final year students at Nottingham Trent University.

It is based on Snakes and Ladders but with cannabis joints replacing the snakes and information about the drug on many of the squares.

Hundreds of copies have already been distributed around bars near the university's city centre campus.

And Nottingham's Crime and Drugs Partnership is now planning to use the leaflets, which include information about the impact of smoking cannabis, at city youth centres.

The students involved were Paul Harrington, Ibou Camara, Pooja Shah, Osman Hussain and Mark Ryan.

The project, which is being funded by £1,000 from the Nottingham Crime and Drugs Partnership, forms part of the final year of their health and environment degrees.

Elsewhere on the board game leaflet there is information about services young people can access if they have concerns about cannabis use.

Paul Harrington, 31, from Sandicare, said: "We just want to raise awareness among students about how cannabis might affect them at university.

"It is not to judge them on their actions – it is making an informed choice."

Part of the leaflet describes how tetra-hydro-cannibol, the active ingredient in cannabis, can attack the way cells in the brain work. The strength of new strains of the drug was cited by the Government in support of its decision to reclassify cannabis as a class B drug in January.

Pooja Shah, 22, from St Ann's, said: "I think people were just naive to it. They just thought it was cannabis and there wasn't anything more to it."

One university student, who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity, smoked regularly until he gave up last summer. "I was getting lazy and I didn't want to come in to university," he said. "Now I think it is a waste of money."