TEENS SPURN TOBACCO, EMBRACE POT

More Adolescents Smoke Pot In Canada Than Anywhere Else In The World

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 today, 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 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.