MORE YOUNG PEOPLE SMOKE POT THAN TOBACCO, SURVEY FINDS

Average Age Of First Marijuana Use Is 14.7 Years, Compared To 13.9
Years For Tobacco And 14.1 Years For Alcohol

A Vancouver Coastal Health survey has found that most youth in
Vancouver start smoking marijuana before their 15th birthday, not long
after their first whiff of tobacco or sip of beer.

The city-wide survey of youth aged 16 to 24 shows cannabis sativa is
the illicit drug of first choice for today's young people.

Almost seven out of every 10 of those surveyed (68 per cent) said they
had tried marijuana at least once.

That climbs to a whopping 80 per cent for those aged 19 to 24,
suggesting that just 20 per cent of the city's younger residents have
never experimented with the illegal plant.

Overall, 54 per cent of all those surveyed told researchers they had
used marijuana during the past year.

Some 24 per cent had used cannabis during the past week; eight per
cent said they smoked marijuana daily.

The average age they first used marijuana was 14.7 years, compared to
13.9 years for tobacco and 14.1 years for alcohol.

These are some of the key findings of a drug use survey based on
confidential interviews with more than 600 teens and young adults.

Between May and August last year, researchers sought out those young
people in Vancouver shopping malls, coffee shops, beaches and parks.
They looked for subjects in all six community health areas of the
city, using census data to seek a representative sample that broadly
reflected the drug experiences of youth from all age and ethnic groups
in both rich and poor neighbourhoods, not just kids on the streets in
the drug-troubled Downtown Eastside. Researchers gave youths a $20
gift card in exchange for a 45-minute interview.

The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority hasn't yet released the
publicly funded drug survey, but the lead researcher outlined some of
the results at a lecture last week at the downtown Vancouver campus of
Simon Fraser University.

"What's really ironic here in Vancouver is that we have more people
reporting cannabis use than tobacco use," Dr. Cameron Duff, manager of
research and youth addiction services at Vancouver Coastal Health,
told a small audience of substance abuse experts.

"With the exception of daily cannabis use, the young people we spoke
to were very much of the view that there wasn't a great deal of risk
associated with this drug.

"There's a very different view for other kinds of drugs -- cannabis
really stands alone."

Ecstasy, a psychoactive drug that has both stimulant and
hallucinogenic properties, was originally produced as an appetite
suppressant. It has been illegally made and sold since the late 1980s,
often at late-night parties, "raves" and concerts.

Duff said the survey showed ecstasy is in a second category or tier of
drugs that are less popular and less available than marijuana. He put
crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine and heroin in a third tier of
drugs -- drugs that are used even less frequently by Vancouver youth.

Of the young people surveyed, 33 per cent reported trying ecstasy at
least once; 18 per cent used the drug in the past year; seven per cent
in the last month. Duff noted almost two-thirds reported ecstasy was
"very easy" or "fairly easy" to obtain.

"Ecstasy is the drug that high school kids are using, the drug they
anticipate using more in the future, the drug they regard as the most
interesting and fashionable drug to be using at the moment," he said.

Of the 604 youths surveyed, 11.8 per cent reported they had tried
crystal meth at least one time. Four per cent had used the drug once
in the past 12 months; two per cent in the last month.

The scientific name for crystal meth is methamphetamine
hydrochloride.

Methamphetamine increases the heart rate, causing irreversible damage
to blood vessels in the brain, and sometimes triggering strokes and
fatal heart problems.