VIEW EARLY POT USE AS HEALTH, NOT LEGAL, ISSUE

Education Better Than Punishing Young Kids

Teens should be discouraged from smoking marijuana as part of good
public-health policy, not because they'll be punished by police,
according to health researchers. Most casual users of cannabis suffer
few ill-effects but it is those users who start young and smoke a lot
of pot over a long period of time who can suffer significant harm,
warns Simon Fraser University's " Benedikt Fischer.

New research led by the health sciences professor and published in the
International " Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research urges
putting a stop to Canada's one-size-fits all approach to cannabis "
use.

"The way we go about cannabis policy is with a very big and heavy
hammer and we see only one nail, which is the enforcement and
punishment approach, so we hammer away at that," Fischer said Thursday.

"We have primarily a law that says all cannabis use is bad and we
should punish " all people who engage in that behaviour, " rather than
using a tightly controlled " regulatory approach as we do with alcohol."

Fischer recommends that "universal cannabis-use prohibition" should be
replaced with "effective interventions" aimed at a few early and
high-frequency users who face the most risks to their mental and
physical health.

More effective than threats of punishment or police action would be
"realistic, appropriate and health-focused educational initiatives
aimed at school-aged children," said Fischer.

"If you're a parent, try to convince your children ideally on the
basis of compliance, rather than punishment.

"It's best that children not get into cannabis use in their
mid-teens," Fischer says, noting that kids who start smoking marijuana
at 15 or younger tend to develop, or exacerbate, mental and physical
health problems.

Young teens may smoke pot to "self-medicate" or cover up issues such
as depression, anxiety or learning difficulties, but their use of pot
then makes it difficult to diagnose underlying issues and get help to
kids who need it.

Fischer's study, which notes that cannabis is the most commonly used
"illicit drug" in the Canadian population, looked at 1,303 current
cannabis users.

Researchers identified the highest-risk group to experience health
problems as only those users who began smoking pot early and kept up
almost daily use.

Notes Fischer: "This group was disproportionately linked to key harms,
including using
other illicit drugs, driving while intoxicated, substance-abuse problems
and medical
issues."