ARE MORE PEOPLE SMOKING POT? NOT IN MANITOBA

MANITOBA is the only province in the country that didn't see a jump in
the number of people reporting using marijuana, a Statistics Canada
survey has found.

And on the same day the survey reported the number of Canadians aged
15 and older who admitted using cannabis has nearly doubled in the
last 13 years, Prime Minister Paul Martin announced the federal
government is still committed to marijuana decriminalization and will
reintroduce the proposed law to Parliament.

"The legislation on marijuana -- the decriminalization of minor
quantities of marijuana -- that legislation will be introduced,"
Martin told reporters.

Prior to Martin's comments after a cabinet meeting yesterday, the
Justice Department had been in the dark as to what would happen to the
bill first introduced during the Chretien era.

"We are still waiting for direction from the government," Justice
Department spokeswoman Rene Filiatrault said.

Martin's first government reintroduced Bill C-10 in February but it
didn't even get to second reading before it died on the order paper
when the election was called, a convenient move for the Liberals eager
to keep potentially divisive issues away from the campaign trail. The
Statistics Canada survey, which interviewed almost 37,000 Canadians --
including 2,230 Manitobans -- states that an estimated three million
people reported they used marijuana or hashish at least once in the
year before the survey was conducted in 2002.

The survey did not determine whether more people are smoking
marijuana, or whether more people are admitting to pollsters they
smoke marijuana, perhaps because the political mood is more accepting
of marijuana.

But while provinces like Ontario reported admitted cannabis use as
doubling from five per cent to 10 per cent from 1994 to 2002, and
British Columbia rising from 12 per cent to 16 per cent during the
same time period, Manitoba stayed the same.

In Manitoba, nine per cent of the population said they used marijuana
in the year before 2002, the same percentage as in 1994. Nationally,
12.2 per cent of Canadians reported using marijuana in the past year.

Winnipeg police spokesman Const. Bob Johnson said while the study
indicates usage is the same here, police seizures of hydroponic
operations have escalated in recent months. "Maybe because our usage
numbers haven't gone up, it shows we're just getting a lot of it off
the street," Johnson said.

"It would appear to indicate much of the product is either being
seized by police or going out of province." John Borody, CEO of the
Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, said he believes the survey doesn't
show the true levels of the province's drug abuse.

"The problem with Manitoba is people here use a variety of drugs like
crystal meth (methamphetamine) or cocaine -- it is really dictated by
how much money they have at the time," Borody said.

He said the AFM is going to do a study this fall on the use of
marijuana by youth as young as 12.

"A lot of kids look at alcohol, tobacco or marijuana earlier than in
the past. By Grade 7, 30 per cent of kids have used one of them already."