By Peter Wilson BBC West Midlands Home Affairs correspondent

Thousands of people in the region say they are addicted to cannabis

Once the region's drug users would have to travel into Birmingham to buy their supplies.

Now the networks of dealers appear to stretch into every town and village.

Officially, the number of people who admit to having used illegal drugs in the West Midlands region is 350,000.

Ten per cent of 16 to 59 year olds say they have taken illicit drugs while 15,000 are so addicted that it is causing them and society problems.

Nationally, more than 3.5m people are thought to be regular users of cannabis.

Everyday life

The West Midlands officially has the nation's lowest figures for those affected by drugs.

Yet drug workers question the statistics, saying that at best they are based on estimates or the willingness of people to be truthful.

Users of cannabis - downgraded to a class C drug - are likely to face confiscation rather than prosecution. For many it is part of everyday life.

Chilli believes his cannabis use led to harder drugs and crime

"Chilli", 33, from Birmingham started smoking cannabis when he was 10-years-old and eventually turned to harder drugs.

He has now been free of class-A drugs for 12-months but has been hospitalised twice over his cannabis use.

He said: "It's not a good thing at that age to be into something like that. I have children of my own and I am really worried about them getting into drugs and a life of crime and everything that goes with it."

Despite doctor's telling him to give up cannabis he insists, if it is taken in moderation, that he can handle it.

"I got a bit paranoid. One day I just blanked out, a few things happened and I ended up in hospital. The psychiatrist said I had to stop smoking cannabis."

Consultant Mohammed Ansari of Birmingham's City Hospital said 11 patients had been treated at the hospital over the last three months after apparently overdosing on cannabis.

Mental health problems

After Midlands Today ran a programme about cannabis the studio was flooded with phone calls.

One woman from Shropshire described how her son changed from a "lovely young man who excelled in sports' into a "shaking, unkempt shell" who eventually took his own life.

A community psychiatric nurse from Sandwell said she had increasingly seen people referred to her clinic with mental health problems due to smoking cannabis.

Increasingly, cannabis is losing its image as a carefree soft drug, and young people on the streets of Birmingham report dealers sometimes lacing cannabis with crack cocaine to lure teenagers onto harder addictive drugs.