CANADIANS SMOKING MORE POT THAN EVER BEFORE: POLL

OTTAWA -- Canadians are smoking pot more than ever before and the
majority want police and government to leave people to indulge in peace.

A new poll for the advocacy group NORML Canada shows for the first
time that more than half of Canadians effectively support
legalization, with 57 per cent reporting that people should be "left
alone" if they are caught with small amounts of marijuana for personal
use.

An advance copy of the survey was given to CanWest News Service on
Wednesday, the same day the federal government released a study of
13,000 Canadians showing that marijuana use has doubled in the last
decade.

Fourteen per cent of those surveyed for the federal study said they
smoked pot in the last year, up from 7.4 in 1994. The study also
revealed that almost 30 per cent of 15- to 17-year-olds and 47 per
cent of 18- and 19-year-olds had used marijuana in the last year.

"This is really a rude awakening for the government," said Jody
Pressman, executive director of the advocacy group NORML Canada. The
survey also reveals that only eight per cent support criminalizing
marijuana if it leads to jail time. Another 32 per cent believe that
pot possession should be punished by fines rather than criminal
records, a middle ground that is currently proposed in a federal bill
winding its way through Parliament. NORML wants the federal government
to scrap its controversial decriminalization bill and bring in an end
to prohibition and begin regulating the industry.

"It's easier to get marijuana on a schoolground today than it is to
get alcohol or cigarettes because we don't apply the same regulatory
measures to marijuana to keep it away from young people," said Pressman.

The telephone survey of 1,000 adults was conducted by SES Research of
Ottawa from Oct. 26 to Nov. 1. The results are considered accurate
within 3.1 per cent, 19 times in 20. The support for legalization
appears to have spiked since last fall, when a Decima Research poll of
2,015 Canadians showed that only 40 per cent opposed a state ban on
pot smoking. SES president Nikita Nanos attributed the hike to the
government "normalizing" marijuana use through its policy of allowing
people to smoke for medicinal purposes.

The survey also found that just over half of Canadians support
government regulation of the pot industry.