CANADIAN KIDS TOKING: STUDY

TORONTO (CP) - More Canadian young people appear to be butting out when it
comes to cigarettes, but a growing number of pot smokers has put Canada at
the top of the international heap for marijuana use among young adolescents,
a new study suggests.

''Canadian students are at the high end of using marijuana frequently,''
said William Boyce of Queens' University, principal investigator of the
study on the health and well-being of the country's youth.

The 2002 study of 7,000 kids aged 11 to 15 from across Canada, released
Tuesday, found that about 40 per cent reported using marijuana in the
previous year, about three per cent more than in Switzerland, second on the
list of 35 countries conducting similar studies.

The Netherlands, where the sweet weed has long been decriminalized, was in
the middle of the pack, said Boyce, a professor of community health at the
Kingston, Ont., university.

Questionnaires filled out by the Grades 6 to 10 students showed that 43 per
cent of boys and 37 per cent of girls aged 11, 13 and 15 had used marijuana,
up a couple of percentage points over an earlier study in 1998.

While the research didn't look at reasons for pot being favoured over
tobacco, Boyce speculated that its increased use is tied to the three As -
affordability, availability and acceptability.

''In Canada, I think all three of those things come together so that it's
actually used quite a bit by kids here. It's not so expensive, it's
definitely available and with the legislation introduced in the last
Parliament - and perhaps again in this one - that decriminalizes marijuana
use, it certainly provides a signal to kids that this is not a highly
illegal activity.''

However, the picture for smoking is quite different, especially for girls.

While tobacco use among boys has remained steady, there was a huge drop in
the proportion of 15-year-old girls who reported smoking daily - to 11 per
cent in 2002 from 21 per cent in 1998.

As well, the percentages of girls who smoke cigarettes only occasionally or
had tried smoking for the first time were also down. That reverses a
long-time trend in which more girls were smoking than their male peers.

''So there's something working,'' said Boyce. ''It could be health-education
messages, restricting purchases of smokes (by age) in stores, and maybe the
guys just go ahead and get them anyway. Or it could also be cost. With the
cost of cigarettes going up so high, maybe the girls are feeling that pinch
more than the guys who might have more money from part-time jobs.''

The study is the fourth in a series conducted by Queen's researchers and
released by Health Canada since 1992. They provide not only a snapshot of
how the country's youth are faring, but also a comparison to the United
States and 33 other mostly European countries who take similar portraits of
their young people under the auspices of the World Health Organization.