DON'T TOKE AND DRIVE CAMPAIGN BEGINS

Campaign Aims At Teens Behind Wheel

There's little doubt that smoking pot impairs a person's ability to drive.

It slows reaction time, muddles thinking and disturbs the ability to judge
distances.

But if you ask teenagers, it's not so clear.

"For just in-town driving, it's perfectly fine," said Justin, an 18-year
old from Toronto who didn't want his last name used. "I know how to handle
my pot."

That what the Canadian Public Health Association hopes to combat with its
Pot and Driving campaign, which launched yesterday.

The goal is to get young Canadians -- some of the most prolific pot smokers
in the world -- to put pot in the same category as alcohol when it comes to
driving.

The campaign poster, to be displayed in schools and libraries across the
country, shows two airline pilots smoking pot, with the caption:"If it
doesn't make sense here, why does it makes sense when you drive?"

"We're trying to dispel the the myths around pot and driving," said Elinor
Wilson, of the CPHA.

A recent Canadian study showed that 15% of senior high school students had
smoked pot and driven in the past year, and those people were four times as
likely as their peers to have been involved in an accident. Researchers
can't establish that pot causes accidents, because police in Canada don't
have an accurate roadside test for marijuana.

"There's no doubt (pot) is a problem," Toronto Police Supt. Steve Grant
said. "We see the gamut, from someone who rolls through a red light at a
very slow speed, to fatal collisions."

Justin, who said he smokes pot and drives regularly, has even had an
accident while driving stoned. A friend was teaching him to drive a stick
shift in a parking lot.

"I was too fast with the clutch and we hit a wall. The whole right side of
the car was pretty much gone," he said.

But he blames the clutch.