POT PLANS MISGUIDED, SAYS EXPERT

VANCOUVER -- A top American clinical researcher in the field of drug
addiction warned Tuesday that decriminalizing marijuana could lead to
increased abuse of the drug

Studies show wider availability of a drug coupled with a relaxed attitude
towards it help predict the level of use and addiction, said Dr. Nora
Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse

Volkow said surveys indicate that if a drug is considered safe and benign,
its use spirals. Drug addiction rates can range from 20 to 30 per cent of
users. "The notion of legalizing and making drugs accessible, what it will
do is ultimately increase the number of people that get exposed to the
drug," Volkow said in an interview. "Some of those people will become
addicted that may have not become addicted had it not been so easily
accessible." The best examples, she said, are alcohol and tobacco, both
widely available and relatively acceptable socially and with the most
widespread addiction rates

The federal Liberal government is mulling the decriminalization of
possession of small amounts of pot. The Canadian proposal is drawing frowns
within the U.S. government -- notably from drug-policy czar John Walters

Volkow, here to speak to people working in the drug-addiction field, said
many scientists used to believe marijuana was not addictive

But she said the pot consumed by the baby boom generation had much less of
the active ingredient THC -- which interacts with receptor proteins in the
brain that translate pleasure responses -- than the types now available

"It is this chemical that can lead to the addiction," she said. "When
people were taking marijuana in the past, they were consuming a very weak drug

"The experiences that people may have had -- that are now in their 40s and
50s -- who say 'I never became addicted to that drug,' that does not
necessarily pertain to the type of compound we're seeing today." Research
since then has also revealed a lot more about the effects of marijuana on
those brain receptors and how they help regulate things such as memory and
learning, she said.