POT USE DOUBLES SINCE '89

Other Drugs Also On Rise, StatsCan Says

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 Wednesday 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.

In terms of current marijuana use by province, Nova Scotia, at 13.7
per cent, was behind only British Columbia (15.7 per cent).

Despite the apparent upswing in pot usage, Prime Minister Paul Martin
said in Ottawa that his government remains committed to marijuana
decriminalization and will reintroduce legislation after Parliament
resumes in October.

And Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said that while he is concerned
about the reported rise in drug use, he's unsure arguments that
decriminalization would further increase marijuana use "have any validity."

"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 prime minister.

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, particularly
from its surveys of Ontario students.

"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, noting that about
three-quarters of Ontario students surveyed in the early '90s believed
marijuana or hash posed a danger of physical harm; by 2003, that
figure had plummeted to just over half.

A sea-change in perceived risk - called "generational forgetting" - is
believed to be behind a resurgence in cocaine/crack use among
teenagers, said Adlaf, explaining that most adolescents today have no
experience with adverse cocaine effects, unlike students in the 1980s,
who saw the death of U.S. comedian John Belushi, for instance.

Yet more recent deaths from ecstasy appear to have turned many teens
against the "rave drug," said Adlaf, citing a survey by the Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health which showed reported use had fallen to
four per cent in 2003 from six per cent in 2001.

The Statistics Canada study reveals that the increase hasn't been
confined to cannabis, which includes marijuana, hashish and hash oil.
The survey also found that a higher proportion of Canadians were
taking other illegal drugs: cocaine or crack, ecstasy, LSD and other
hallucinogens, amphetamines (speed), and heroin.

Overall, 2.4 per cent of the survey's almost 37,000 respondents, all
aged 15 or older, reported using at least one of these other drugs in
the previous year, up from 1.6 per cent in 1994. And 1.3 per cent, or
an estimated 321,000 Canadians, had used cocaine or crack, making it
the most commonly used of these illicit, harder drugs.

Cannabis use was most prevalent among young people, and it peaked in
the late teens. Almost four of every 10 teens aged 18 or 19 reported
having smoked pot or hash in the previous year. The proportion among
15- to 17-year-olds was three in 10.

A loosening-up in attitudes towards pot also has likely contributed to
more people smoking up - or admitting that they do. An Ipsos-Reid poll
in May 2003 suggested 55 per cent of Canadians thought smoking pot
should not be a criminal offence.

Greater availability of the leaf may also come into play. Students say
pot is easy to come by and police are reporting increased seizures of
marijuana plants.

Other findings:

- - Almost half (47 per cent) of those who used marijuana or hash in the
previous year did so less than once a month. About 10 per cent used it
weekly; another 10 per cent smoked up daily.

- - Men were more likely than women to use cannabis (15.5 per cent
compared with 9.1 per cent).

- - Cannabis use drops off after age 24, although numbers in the 25-34
and 35-44 age groups were still substantial.

- - In every province except Manitoba, cannabis use was higher in 2002
than 1994.

- - The percentage of Canadians who had used cannabis at least once in
their lifetime was above the national average in Nova Scotia, Alberta
and B.C.