NEW DRUG RULES WOULD HURT KIDS

The debate over whether to relax the marijuana ban hardly seems to be a
debate anymore. To judge from media coverage, almost everyone who speaks
out on the issue is for a liberalized policy.

That includes Senator Pierre Claude Nolin. He's chairman of the Senate
Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which holds public hearings on the
issue tomorrow and Friday in Montreal. It's precisely because the Senate
has such a stodgy image that the pro-liberalization forces hope the
committee's eventual recommendations will carry weight with the Chretien
government, which doesn't want to get too far out in front of public opinion.

In an interview in Voir, Nolin suggested the way to go might be to
decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot and to legalize the
growing of it at home for purposes of personal consumption - rendering it
as prosaic as basement wine-making.

I hope the committee looks carefully at the logic used by its chairman and
others aboard the bandwagon.

Pro-liberalization advocates say that pot is not as addictive as alcohol or
tobacco, that there's no compelling evidence it is a gateway drug and that
to burden young people with criminal records simply for possessing a joint
is punitive overkill. On all these points, of course, they are right.

But it's what these advocates do not say that mars their logic.

Never do they mention the effect their idea might have on kids.

Kids? Oh yeah, them. In the rush to reshape the world to baby-boomers'
wants, they're simply not on the radar.

I don't care what adults do with drugs, soft or hard. But I do care about
kids - defined here as everyone under 18. Adolescence is a time when you
have to make sense of the world. Drugs only offer escape from it. If you
can't deal well with reality, your early decisions on organizing your
future will suffer.

Teachers tell me the correlation between the high-school dropout rate and
drugs is glaring. As well, a study published last month in the Canadian
Media Association Journal says that IQ falls by an average of four points
among high-schoolers who are regular marijuana smokers. At the time when
you're laying your life's foundation, that's quite a handicap.

None of the liberalizers ever suggests that it's OK if kids smoke up more
than they already do. Just about every "reform" scheme applies only to
adults. But the Achilles heel of these proposals is their inadvertent
effect on teenagers.

For years, drug counselors have said that the biggest factors in rising
drug use among adolescents are 1) a growing perception that drug use is
harmless; 2) a changing view of the morality of taking drugs; and 3) rising
availability. With their loud minimization of pot's effects on health and
their harrumphing about current laws, the pro-pot lobby is already giving
impetus to the first two factors. And just about any of the various recipes
for legalization or decriminalization would inevitably increase the use of
drugs by adults in public.

If 13-year-olds see 18-year-olds smoking up with impunity on the street
corner, even more than they do already, it's going to be that much harder
to keep this forbidden fruit from them. Pot use will become all the more
conspicuous as a badge of adulthood.

The pro-pot crowd says, "We'll couple liberalization with education
programs to dissuade kids from being attracted." That's a real howler. The
lesson of decades of anti-tobacco education campaigns is that such didactic
exercises are ineffectual. If anything, they have made cigarettes an even
more enticing symbol of rebellion.

So my advice to Nolin's committee is to apply the sort of cold scrutiny
that the issue has so far avoided.

We too seldom think of our actions' consequences on following generations.
We do too little to slash a wretchedly onerous level of government debt. We
continue to play fast and loose with toxic wastes, steadily ignoring the
long-term consequences. We resist reining in our SUV lifestyle in face of
climate change.

I'm not defending the drug-law status quo. But in trying to make those laws
better, we should keep our eye where it belongs - on the effect on kids.