COUNTRY'S YOUNG PEOPLE GOING TO POT -- STUDY

TORONTO - More Canadian young people appear to be butting out when it
comes to cigarettes, but a growing number of pot smokers has put
Canada at the top of the international heap for marijuana use among
adolescents, a new study suggests.

"Canadian students are at the high end of using marijuana frequently,"
said William Boyce of Queens' University, principal investigator of
the study on the health and well-being of Canada's youth.

The 2002 study of 7,000 kids aged 11 to 15 from across Canada,
released Tuesday, found that about 40 per cent reported using
marijuana in the previous year, about three per cent more than in
Switzerland, second on the list of 35 countries conducting similar
studies.

The Netherlands, where the sweet weed has long been decriminalized,
was in the middle of the pack, said Boyce, a professor of community
health at the Kingston, Ont., university.

Questionnaires filled out by the grades 6 to 10 students showed 43 per
cent of boys and 37 per cent of girls aged 11, 13 and 15 had used
marijuana, up a couple of percentage points over a 1998 study.

While the research didn't look at reasons for pot being favoured over
tobacco, Boyce speculated that its increased use is tied to the three
As -- affordability, availability and acceptability.

"In Canada, I think all three of those things come together so that
it's actually used quite a bit by kids here. It's not so expensive,
it's definitely available and with the legislation introduced in the
last Parliament -- and perhaps again in this one -- that
decriminalizes marijuana use, it certainly provides a signal to kids
that this is not a highly illegal activity."

However, the picture for smoking is quite different, especially for
girls.

While tobacco use among boys has remained steady, there was a huge
drop in the proportion of 15-year-old girls who reported smoking daily
- -- to 11 per cent in 2002 from 21 per cent in 1998. As well, the
percentages of girls who smoke only occasionally or had tried smoking
for the first time were also down.

That reverses a longtime trend in which more girls than their male
peers were smoking.

"So there's something working," said Boyce. "It could be
health-education messages, restricting purchases of smokes (by age) in
stores ... Or it could also be cost. With the cost of cigarettes going
up so high, maybe the girls are feeling that pinch more than the guys."

The study is the fourth in a series conducted by Queen's researchers
and released by Health Canada since 1992. They provide not only a
snapshot of how Canada's youth are faring, but also a comparison to
the United States and 33 other countries who take similar portraits of
their young people under the auspices of the World Health
Organization.

Alcohol use was also a concern, not just with young people who
occasionally drink, but for those who say they "get really drunk,"
said Boyce. In 2002, 46 per cent of Grade 10 boys reported getting
drunk at least twice in the previous year, up three per cent since
1998, and 42 per cent of girls, the same level as four years earlier.

The study also showed relationships with parents are important to
young people.

OTHER KEY FINDINGS

- - Girls eat more nutritious foods than do boys, but more girls than
boys skip breakfast and diet to lose weight.

- - Between one-fifth and one-quarter of boys in each age group from 11
to 15 were classified as overweight or obese using the Body Mass
Index. Fewer than one-fifth of the girls in each of the age groups
were overweight or obese.

- - More than one-third of both boys and girls report being bullied in
the past couple of months. More than 20 per cent report being both
bullies and victims.

- - More than two-thirds of older students report that they spend at
least one hour each weekday on the computer playing games, chatting,
e-mailing, or surfing the Internet.