GETTING HIGHER

As more teens turn to pot the debate simmers on: is smoking up harmful?

A group of mid-teens huddle in the bushes near a middle-class Greater
Victoria high school. Classes are over on this cold autumn day and it's time
to really chill -- by rolling and sharing a joint. These kids do it all the
time, not that they look or sound like druggies. They appear healthy and
sound articulate as they talk up pot as an everyday pastime that they've
been using for years to relax, relieve depression, help them sleep or --
implausibly -- focus their concentration.

They're part of the biggest upswing in dope smoking in the last 25 years,
with statistics showing that marijuana use is now a mainstream teen
activity. And the age of users is going down as the frequency of use goes
up.

B.C.'s McCreary Centre Society found that 40 per cent of nearly 26,000 B.C.
students in Grades 7-12 had smoked pot at least once by 1998-99, up from 25
per cent in 1992. Most try it at age 14 or younger.

Teens are now more likely to try pot than to touch cigarettes.

Clean-cut Ryan is 17 and started smoking dope at 13. "It started out with
depression,'' he says. "Hey, it made me feel better.'' So good, in fact,
that he smokes up to four times a day, often with friends. "It's just a
regular pastime,'' he says. And to adults who wag their fingers at how bad
it is, he responds: "You don't hear about people who are stoned getting in
huge car crashes and beating their wives.''

Kris, also 17, likes to get high, claiming it helps him concentrate or
unwind.

"Adults have a beer; kids want to smoke a joint,'' he says.

He objects indignantly to the anti-weed commercials he's seen on TV as
"completely false. You're not that slow; you're not that stupid,'' he
protests. "I can go to school and ace the test.''

Ken, 16, has been smoking up since Grade 8. His parents know he smokes dope
a lot: ''They're totally OK about it but they'd like to keep it quiet around
my little sister.''

He doesn't think it does him any harm to smoke up every day or two,
especially before he goes to bed. "It actually helps you get to sleep,'' he
says. "I pretty much know the health effects involved and it's my choice to
do it,'' he says. "I've read a lot about pot and it's not bad from a health
perspective.''

And on one level, this high school kid is right. Even Dr. Perry Kendall,
B.C.'s provincial health officer agrees -- to a certain extent.

Most of the medical evidence for marijuana shows it can be used in a way
that is "relatively harm-free'' even for teens, Kendall says.

That would mean smoking up at home, and not behind the wheel or at school,
nor all the time.

"The evidence is that that's not particularly harmful. It's illegal; it'll
get them into trouble but it's not in and of itself particularly harmful.
Which is why the Senate committee felt that it should be regulated and
legalized.''

But the current bill before Parliament proposing decriminalization of pot
appears poised to die should Parliament dissolve today -- and he wishes it
wouldn't.

"I am not in any way promoting (marijuana) use but I do not think it's
appropriate to criminalize recreational young users,'' says Kendall.

Not only is there little evidence that criminalization of pot deters
adolescents, he's concerned that "reefer madness" messages cause kids to
discount other messages about more dangerous substances such as crystal meth
or designer drugs.

Kendall, formerly head of Ontario's Addiction Research Foundation, is a
realist when it comes to adolescents and pot. That they're smoking up is a
given. So it's the context that becomes crucial to the safety of users.

"(If) you're going to smoke cannabis, it's much better to do it socially,
intermittently and on weekends. There's harmful use and there's not harmful
use.''

Still, he issues some heavy-duty warnings to kids about weed: "If they're
smoking it before they go to school, it's certainly going to mess up their
education and their learning ability.

"If they're smoking and driving or operating heavy equipment, it's going to
impair their abilities to do that. And if they're smoking it frequently,
there are problems with chronic use -- cognitive, behavioural and issues of
memory, information processing, some intellectual impairment. It's probably
reversible but it's as bad an idea to go to school or be regularly
intoxicated with marijuana as it is to be intoxicated with alcohol.''

Even a couple of puffs can get kids stoned, given the potency of some of
today's B.C. bud.

Meanwhile, the number of early teens in B.C. trying pot doubled to 20 per
cent in 1999 from a decade ago as social sanctions decrease due to
high-profile advocates for medicinal use, a wide-spread push for
decriminalization, targeting a generation of parents who know what it's like
to be stoned.

Even the Prime Minister Jean Chretien makes jokes about smoking dope
post-retirement.

"The rate of marijuana use has gone up dramatically in the past decade so
that more kids are using and using more often,'' says Dr. Roger Tonkin,
chairman of the McCreary Centre Society, a non-profit agency that monitors
adolescent health in B.C.

Tonkin challenges the idea that pot is a "safe recreational activity'' for
adolescents, citing research that links it to everything from lack of
motivation, chronic class cutting, and side effects such as "depression,
multiple substance abuse, dietary dysfunction and family conflict'' to later
onset of serious disease or impairment.

Pot smokers are more likely than non-users to take much higher risks in many
areas, including cigarette smoking, binge drinking, having unprotected sex,
getting into fights, and carrying a weapon to school. Few classify
themselves as above average students -- 13 per cent versus 72 per cent on
non-users.

A recent Health Canada survey of 1,250 people aged 12-19 found 32 per cent
had tried pot; rising to 54 per cent of those 15-19. In 1994, only 33 per
cent of those 15-24 had tried pot.

Almost one-quarter (23 per cent) of B.C. adolescents have smoked up more
than 10 times compared with 13 per cent of students in 1992. And one-fifth
(21 per cent) used it at least once in the month prior to the survey.

Marijuana use among the very young most concerns Tonkin, a retired
pediatrician from Galiano Island who spearheaded the Canadian Pediatric
Society's decision to take a position on the issue, expected to be published
later this month.

"Those that smoke up at an early age are more inclined to engage in other
risky behaviours that can be at least as harmful if not more harmful than
the marijuana they start off with -- alcohol, hard drugs, risky driving,
risky sex,'' he says.

"More long-term studies on respiratory function and the prevalence of
chronic lung disease, cancers and cognitive capacity among chronic marijuana
users are needed, but the available evidence shows that these negative
effects are present,'' Tonkin wrote last year in Pediatrics and Child
Health.

Tonkin says it's crucial to know more about how marijuana affects young
adolescent brains, which may be more prone to addictive patterns.

"The only thing we know is during that phase of development the hardwiring
goes in and there is some suggestion that maybe that gets compromised.''

Cancers and chronic lung disease may await pot-smoking children down the
road, he warns.

It took a long time for epidemiologists to connect cancer and tobacco, he
says. "We're obviously going to have to wait for a fairly long time with
respect to marijuana.''

According to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, today's marijuana,
up to five times more powerful than in the 1970s -- can cause "adverse
physical, mental, emotional and behavioural changes, and -- contrary to
popular belief -- it can be addictive.

"The use of marijuana can impair short-term memory, verbal skills and
judgment and possibly increase a user's likelihood of developing cancer.''

Given the potential for harm, not enough is being done to tune kids in, says
Art Steinmann, executive director of the non-profit Alcohol-Drug Education
Service, which provides teaching materials to about 1,500 B.C. classrooms.

"We are not in any systematic way educating kids about the possible downside
of marijuana,'' he says. "Basically, we've tended to put our resources into
enforcement and prevention.''

Richard Garlick, spokesman for the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse,
agrees that more of a message about the risks of cannabis needs to get out,
much the way campaigns against smoking and drinking worked.

"There's a certain amount of complacency by kids who say it's safer than
smoking or drinking, and they're right. Tobacco kills 40,000 Canadians a
year. And when you look at alcohol, it probably kills 5,000 to 7,000 people
a year. As far as we know, nobody actually dies of cannabis overdose, but we
need to understand what role it may play in accidents and particularly
highway fatalities.''

Thus far, research shows that most of the harm from cannabis use relates to
heavy and prolonged smoking rather than short-term intermittent use, he
says.

He adds that he has encountered some brilliant people who have become
paranoid and incapacitated in dealing with life after smoking too much
marijuana.

"For the most part, we see reversible effects once use ends, whether it's
mood disorders or delusions or hallucinations.''

Reviews of the scientific literature shows very few pot smoking adolescents
will carry usage into adulthood or turn to hard drugs, he adds.

He would rather see limited research dollars spent on how to help kids deal
with the social and behaviour impacts of pot smoking rather than adolescent
brain research per se.

"We don't have a measure on the actual harm. We don't know what role it
plays in disrupting their activities including school.

"We don't know to what extent it results in injuries because of impairment."