Sir: The trend of smoking ‘hash’ (marijuana) has risen at an alarming rate in our youth. Nearly every second person at a party is puffing on a ‘joint’, without knowing the consequences it leaves for our mental and general health. Whomever I talked to about the reasons for taking hash, all of them had one answer: they were looking for ‘oblivion’. And that once they were high, they ‘chilled’. If this is the take of our youth on life and its demands, then the country is heading towards producing escapists in its future. The recent trend of shisha smoking has played a big role in making hash an attractive commodity for young people. SHAHZAIB ZAHID Lahore