STUDENTS GET AN EARFUL ABOUT WEED

Education session draws 250 high schoolers Point made: Pot industry hurts
users, non-users

Jared Dickson missed classes yesterday to get schooled on pot.

Not that he didn't know enough about it already.

"I'm a musician," the 16-year-old Aurora High School student said. Grass,
he said, is part of the scene.

Dickson and about 250 other York Region students took part in the Youth
Summit on Cannabis at Pierre Elliot Trudeau High School in Markham.

Organizations including York Region police and York Region Health Services
joined to put on the one-day educational workshop. About 50 schools were
invited to send students, who heard from a doctor and an officer, among others.

"Marijuana is becoming increasingly discussed in the media," said Patricia
Scott-Jeoffroy, a health educator for substance-abuse prevention with the
region. "What we're trying to do is provide accurate, balanced and credible
information."

Dickson stood on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette during a break. He wore a
Led Zeppelin sweatshirt and a multicoloured knit hat over his braided hair.

"Why is weed illegal and alcohol isn't?" he asked.

"Alcohol and cigarettes kill more people than weed does," added Dave
Landry, a Grade 11 Bayview Secondary School student.

He's right, but pot is still harmful to your health, said Dr. Bobby Espin.

Smoking three or four joints a day is equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes,
he told the crowd.

More carcinogens are inhaled when smoking marijuana because there is no
filtration system, no quality control, and pot smokers inhale deeper and
hold the smoke in their lungs longer, he said.

And it's not just the plant that people are smoking, said Detective Mike
Klimm, of York Region police.

"(Growers) spray chemicals on them and sell them."

Klimm showed slide-show images of a car accident in Perth where four
teenagers died in a vehicle driven by a person who had smoked pot.

Most of the images were of ordinary-looking homes that were used as
grow-houses, bringing criminals into suburban neighbourhoods and raising
the risk of fire.

One in 500 homes in York Region is a grow-house, he added.

"There's effects on the community, and there's safety hazards associated
with it, because someone has to produce it." Users only promote these
negative effects, he said.

Maple High School teacher Erin Tanaka said the information was helpful, but
the students would have benefited from having a speaker they could identify
with.

"Having someone tell a real-life experience would've hit home to them."

Brooke Hogarth said the workshop cuts through a lot of confusion.

"We get a lot of mixed messages in terms of whether it harms you or whether
you'll get a ticket," said the Grade 12 Bayview Secondary School student.

Dickson said the session will make people think.

"In the end, people are going to smoke weed anyway. Now there's one more
thing that's on their mind when they do: This industry that I'm fuelling is
hurting people."

Physician Bobby Esbin Spoke On Marijuana

Dr. Bobby Esbin spoke at the Youth Summit on Cannabis, organized in part by
the York Region District School Board, at Pierre Elliott Trudeau High
School, Markham, on Wednesday. His name was misspelled in a Thursday story.
The Star regrets the error.