SMOKING STIGMA TURNS TEENS OFF MARIJUANA

Changing attitudes to cigarette smoking are being linked to a reduction in
the number of teenagers smoking cannabis, drug experts say.

An Auckland University student health and wellbeing survey released this
week found a considerable drop in the rates of cigarette and cannabis use,
which the Drug Foundation believed is linked to anti-smoking campaigns.

Director Ross Bell said the significant drop in cannabis use - from 39 per
cent of secondary school students in 2001 to 27 per cent last year - was a
good shift as the drug affected adolescent brain development.

He believed New Zealand's long-running anti-smoking campaign, focusing on
how smoking damages the lungs, had influenced teens' perception of all
forms of smoking.

"Young people are transferring the view that smoking is bad for you to
anything they smoke, whether it's pot or tobacco."

European drug experts have also made the link. Britain's The Guardian
reported last month that smoking bans meant it had become less socially
acceptable to smoke cigarettes, and marijuana joints, in public.

"A lot of young people are strongly anti-cigarette smoking and as society
changes the way it views tobacco it seems to be changing attitudes to
cannabis as well," Paul Griffiths, of the European monitoring centre for
drugs, told the newspaper.

Mr Bell said the situation was slightly different in Europe, where
cannabis was mixed with tobacco before smoking.

He said New Zealand's fall in tobacco use had been expected, but the
cannabis drop was surprising. "Though we do know a lot of cannabis smokers
are also tobacco smokers."

British rates of marijuana use are also lower with just 20 per cent of
British youth smoking the drug in 2000, falling to 15.6 per cent last
year, The Guardian reported.

Cannabis remains the main illicit drug used by Kiwis - and the most used
drug worldwide - with a 2006 survey finding around 80 per cent of New
Zealanders had tried the drug.

WAITING TO INHALE

2001 - 2007

Tried smoking cigarettes: 52 per cent - 32 per cent

Smoke cigarettes weekly: 16 per cent - 8 per cent

Tried cannabis: 39 per cent - 27 per cent

Source: Youth07, the Health and Wellbeing of Secondary School Students in
New Zealand, Auckland University.