POT USE DOUBLES DURING 13 YEARS

The Highest Rates Of Use Of Marijuana Or Hashish Were With Canadian Teens.

TORONTO -- It seems more Canadians than ever are going to pot --
smoking up, toking up and generally embracing the sweet weed. In fact,
the proportion of Canadians who admit to indulging in marijuana or
hashish almost doubled over 13 years -- and the highest rates of use
were among teens, a report released yesterday by Statistics Canada
suggests.

That translates into about three million Canadians, or 12.2 per cent,
who used cannabis at least once in the previous year, the federal
agency said in its 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey. In 1989, the
figure was 6.5 per cent.

Prime Minister Paul Martin said in Ottawa that his government is
committed to marijuana decriminalization and will reintroduce
legislation after Parliament resumes in October.

And Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said while he is concerned about the
reported rise in drug use, he doubts the arguments of those who say
decriminalization would further boost the use of marijuana.

"My view is that, if you make something illegal, some people are more
attracted to it," he said. "It's just the high in getting something in
a stealth(y) fashion . . . If you allow people to possess it in small
quantities for personal use, the allure kind of disappears for some
people."

While the issue of decriminalizing cannabis has been much in the media
spotlight, the latest national figures don't reflect those
discussions. This survey was done in 2002, the year before an Ontario
court judge made a precedent-setting ruling that possessing a small
amount of pot was not illegal and before Jean Chretien tried to ram
through a decriminalization bill before stepping down as PM.

The hike in marijuana's popularity comes as no surprise to Edward
Adlaf, a research scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental
Health in Toronto, which has reported similar trends. "We've been
finding during the '90s among students -- and these are seventh
graders to 12th graders -- that fewer and fewer students perceive
great risk in using cannabis," said Adlaf.