DISCONNECT BETWEEN POT USE, LAWS

It is not surprising a new study says the number and average age of
pot smokers in Ontario is rising. Use of the drug once was most
prevalent among teens and twenty-somethings. But now the average pot
user is 31, according to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health,
which notes smoking and drinking are in decline.

Those teens who got high in the 1970s, '80s or '90s are now adults
with kids of their own, but many are still smoking up. In fact, 14
per cent of adults are smoking pot with some regularity.

You may have attended a party lately and found one or more of the
adults quietly wandered off and smoked up, even though there was
plenty of legal alcohol available.

The Paul Martin Liberals wanted to decriminalize marijuana possession
while cracking down on the growers.

Their idea never became law and they were later defeated.

Nevertheless, many Canadians toke more boldly than ever, thinking
they can puff with impunity when they are really at the mercy of the
police if caught.

Meanwhile, police regularly bust grow-ops, which can be a fire hazard
and, as a criminal enterprise often in the centre of residential
neighbourhoods, a public safety risk.

Clearly there is a disconnect between people's personal behaviour and
its consequences out there in our community.

It is just the Me Generation now a little older, who will not forgo
that particular kind of high they can only get from marijuana and
will let others break the law to supply them? Is it the fact that
it's illegal that adds to the thrill?

Some day we will have to own up to this problem.

Either we will have to accept that marijuana use is so deeply
ingrained in our society that it is unfair and unwise to be throwing
people in jail and fostering an underworld of crime to feed our demand.

It is a drug that is probably no more harmful than alcohol, which is
legal, generates tax revenue and creates jobs in which you do not end
up in prison.

That, or once you reach adulthood, the rituals of adolescence such
as smoking pot, should be dropped as you try to be a responsible
adult who understands the importance obeying the law and setting an
example for your children.