STUDENT POT USE ON THE RISE

Marijuana Use Is Reaching Historic Highs Among Toronto Students and Adults,
a Study on Illegal Drug Use Has Found.

The Toronto Research Group on Drug Use -- a coalition of 20 agencies,
including the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and Toronto Public
Health -- released a report yesterday, which culled information from a
variety of research studies and surveys.

About 23 per cent of intermediate and high school students surveyed in 2003
said they had smoked pot in the past year, while the figure was only 15 per
cent for adults. Those numbers are among the highest to be reported since
monitoring began about 30 years ago.

"There's no evidence at the moment that this increase is continuing, that
it's going higher. Cannabis use among adolescents in Toronto and the
province has been fairly stable between 1999 ... and 2003," said Ed Adlaf,
a senior scientist with the addiction centre, though he noted the rate
among students hit a low of 8 per cent in 1993.

Joyce Bernstein, a public health epidemiologist, said drug use rates among
street youth and the homeless at large are much higher.

"Street life for these kids is not a party," Bernstein said, noting
thousands of teens "self-medicate with illicit drugs."

Bernstein said the lack of residential drug treatment for at-risk youth
makes the problem even more acute.

Adlaf noted that students in Toronto actually report lower levels of drug
use -- among 20 different types surveyed -- than their counterparts in the
rest of the province. He attributes that to the city's large immigrant
population.

"It does surprise many people that ... drug use would be lower in a large
urban centre. (But) there's actually a lot of literature showing that
immigrants -- including adolescents and adults -- are less likely to use
illegal drugs," Adlaf said.

Sometimes known as the "healthy immigrant effect," Adlaf added that it also
shows up in comparisons of mental health between immigrants and homegrown
Canadians.