LAX ATTITUDES ON DOPE LEAD TO STONED KIDS

The chickens are coming home to roost on the chattering classes' view of
marijuana.

Federal Justice Minister Martin Cauchon winks at pot use, groups as diverse
as Bloc Quebecois on the left and the Fraser Institute on the right applaud
his bill to decriminalize possession of small amounts of the drug, the
entertainment media present smoking up as cool and journalistic
commentators ridicule critics as fuddy-duddies.

Now we're seeing the consequences of this banalization of drugs. One of the
many newspapers that has urged Ottawa to legalize marijuana outright, La
Presse reported indignantly this week Montreal's biggest school board was
helpless to defend teenagers from a rising tide of drug use.

Surprise, surprise.

The newspaper said the Commission scolaire de Montreal has abandoned zero
tolerance at 10 of its high schools. Students who are stoned in class are
no longer suspended for several days but educated in what might be called
adroit drug use. La Presse quotes a CSDM drug-prevention specialist as
saying, "We no longer say that you should never take mind-altering
substances. We say it's more problematic to consume them at school than on
Saturday night."

Given this toothlessness, there is little wonder one community organization
estimates 20 per cent of students at Jeanne Mance high school have gone to
class under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Or that kids toke up just a
few metres from that school's property.

I don't blame the CSDM for its defeatism. The real problem is much broader.
For about a decade, opinion leaders' dominant message has been pot use is
cool, and that's a hard message for educators to nullify.

To be sure, some boards are holding the fort. The English Montreal School
Board, for one, still suspends first-time offenders for several days.
Opinion leaders should be supporting such efforts, not undermining them -
as Prime Minister Jean Chretien did so clumsily last week in joking he
might himself smoke his first joint once Cauchon's bill becomes law this
winter.

I don't base my criticism on moralism but on pragmatism. Stoned kids don't
learn in class. They don't concentrate. They lose motivation and too often
drop out of school.

I'd like to see enthusiasts of marijuana decriminalization - including The
Gazette's editorial board - try to reconcile that position with their
denunciation of the city's enduringly high drop-out rate.

That's the thing about this campaign to relax the laws on pot use: It is
based on what's good for adults. Many who promote decriminalization take
into account the effect on kids about as much as SUV drivers consider their
vehicles' effect on the environment their kids will inherit.

Another striking thing about this campaign is false premises.

One such assumption is under current law, many otherwise good kids get
saddled with criminal records for possession of a simple joint. Touching,
but Cauchon has given no evidence this is happening on a significant scale.
Most people arrested for possession are charged simultaneously with more
serious crimes such as car theft or burglary. Cops often use the threat of
a criminal charge to deter "nice kids" from abusing drugs. Sure it's
imperfect, but it's better than the permissive alternative.

The Prohibition era inspires another bogus premise: That it's futile to
repress intoxicating substances. But as Mark Moore, criminal-justice
professor at Harvard has pointed out, Prohibition's utter failure is myth.
Cirrhosis death rates for U.S. men fell from 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 to
10.7 in 1929. True, organized crime became more visible during Prohibition
but homicide rates stayed roughly constant.

On Tuesday, the Ontario Court of Appeal reinstated the law banning simple
possession of marijuana. But so long as our eager-to-toke prime minister is
around, this is unlikely to do much to improve law enforcement. Indeed,
Radio-Canada reported last week the RCMP was cutting its Montreal drug
squad from 80 to 37 employees.

As the wild situation at the CSDM shows, it's going to be hard to put this
drug-use genie back in the bottle. But Step 1 would be for opinion leaders
to think twice before giving the bill their continued blessing.

Cauchon's foolish bill is not law yet.