POT PROHIBITION A POLICY FLOP

If we needed any more proof that the war being waged against pot is futile,
we got it a few days ago in a Health Canada report. The federal agency
reports pot is easier to get in Canadian school yards than tobacco.
According to people somewhat younger than me, this has not been news for
some time.

Meanwhile the police and criminal justice system resources poured into
prohibition of the sale and particularly the production of marijuana have
gone up considerably. So have the profits made by organized crime from the
production and sale of pot.

What is news though, as Health Canada has reported, is that marijuana use
among teenagers has continued to climb. Now we find that 30 percent of 15-
to 17-year-olds and 47 percent of 18- and 19-year-olds have used it in the
past year. A Canadian addiction survey produced just before Christmas
pointed out that in the past decade marijuana use among Canadians has doubled.

In spite of all of this the federal government is still intent on passing
legislation that would maintain marijuana as a prohibited substance.
Possession of small amounts would still be illegal although not criminal.
Cultivation of pot could produce penalties of imprisonment in excess of
those handed out to convicted terrorists or arms traffickers. If anyone
thinks this will reduce the use of pot by kids, you have to wonder what
they are smoking.

But let us compare the approach to pot with what we are doing with tobacco.
Tobacco is a regulated substance. Its sale is restricted to people above a
certain age. But nobody is going to bust a kid for smoking a cigarette.

Rather than prohibition and threats of fines or imprisonment, governments
are using regulation and education to influence tobacco consumption.

The latest program funded by the B.C. Lung Association and Health Canada is
being run by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. It is called SWAT,
Students Working Against Tobacco. The basic message delivered to a hip-hop
beat in high schools and elementary schools is that smoking is not "cool."
It is based on a model developed in several U.S. states where the attitude
towards cigarettes is more rational that their approach to pot.

Since SWAT was introduced in Florida in 1998, smoking in middle schools has
dropped by 50 percent. In high schools it is down by 35 percent.

We have had other tobacco reduction strategies aimed at young people for
the past several years and they, too, are showing positive results. Five
years ago 28 percent of teenagers between 15 and 19 smoked. According to
the latest figures, that is now down to 21 percent.

People in the field admit that a program similar to SWAT focused on pot
would be difficult if not impossible to launch for the simple reason that
pot is illegal. That not only makes the substance more attractive for kids,
it makes it much harder to discuss in an open forum.

We faced the same dilemma with sex education. As long as we insisted on
prohibition or abstinence out of wedlock, there was nothing more to
discuss. Once we accepted that kids were going to mess around, the subjects
of safe sex and self-respect could be talked about.

What we continue to see with pot is proof that prohibition is a major part
of the problem. Yet we continue, as we will again in Vancouver this year,
to increase police budgets to support policies that have failed and will
continue to fail.

Police, including our own Chief Jamie Graham, will insist on prohibition
because in their view pot is a gateway drug; it leads users to heroin or
crack. For some reason that point continues to win the day even though it
has no credibility among our most senior judges and the growing number of
young purchasers of pot in our school yards.