SOFTER DRUG LAW SOUGHT

Teen Marijuana Use Up, ODS Wants To End Possession
Penalties

To score marijuana in the capital, you don't even have to ask. Just
show up.

On a sunny afternoon at a beer garden in Prague 2, joints circulated
freely around the tables. Possession of a small amount of marijuana
carries a sentence of up to two years in prison, but the young people
smoking in broad daylight appeared unconcerned.

A recently released Interior Ministry survey of secondary-school
students between the ages of 14 and 19 found that 47.6 percent have
tried drugs. And 82 percent of users tried marijuana or hashish first.

But some parliamentarians don't think police should waste their time
on marijuana smokers. Eva Dundackova and Lucie Talmanova, both members
of the conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS), recently announced
plans to introduce an amendment that would decriminalize possession of
marijuana, while increasing penalties for dealing.

"Nobody gets in trouble for pot," said 23-year-old Jirka, who declined
to give his surname. He and his 20-year-old sister Mlada have been
growing their own pot for more than three years. They live outside the
capital and said their parents are aware that they cultivate marijuana.

"They know it may be illegal, but it's not bad," Jirka said. If the
amendment passed, they wouldn't be breaking any laws unless they sold
it, which Jirka said they don't.

"I don't like buying and selling it, so I grow it," he
said.

Ivan Langer, the ODS deputy chairman, said laws cracking down on drug
users have failed and that he supports the decriminalization of possession.

"I know it sounds a bit strange," he said. "No one wants to legalize
drugs; we just want to change the system." Langer and his ODS
colleagues said it should still be illegal for minors to use drugs.

But little is being done to halt marijuana use among
teenagers.

David, 18, said he was caught with a joint in the school bathroom
during a post-finals party, but wasn't disciplined. "They made me
extinguish it, that's all," he said.

David smokes pot with his friends Robert and Sara several times a
week. Sara, 15, said she has smoked pot with her 27-year-old
stepmother. And Robert, 18, who first tried marijuana when he was 15,
started growing marijuana in his house about two years ago.

"My mother waters my plant for me," he said.