NOT THE GROOVY '60S

Today's Cannabis Is Harder And Meaner

For Don Smyth, it was the kind of encounter he has had too often. A
Filipino family had invited him to their little townhouse in Toronto
to see whether he could help rescue their 18-year-old son, who was
about to be expelled from school for drug trafficking. Mr. Smyth, a
therapist, specializes in drug prevention and addiction among young adults.

When the kid was roused from bed, Mr. Smyth saw he was severely
addicted. "He showed all the physical signs - agitation,
restlessness, aggression - that I used to see in people withdrawing
from cocaine." But the drug wasn't cocaine. It was marijuana.

Last week, people reacted with outrage over the story of Kieran King,
the 15-year-old Saskatchewan student whose school came down on him
like a sledgehammer because he dared to argue that marijuana is
relatively benign. The school was wrong in its reaction but right on
its facts. The vast majority of the marijuana inhaled today is not
the mellow weed you and I remember from our youth. It is many times
more powerful. In fact, the United Nations now classifies
Canadian-grown marijuana as a hard drug whose destructive power puts
it in the same league as cocaine.

Today's harder, meaner cannabis is a scourge in many of Canada's
poorer neighbourhoods. It is a spreading affliction on native
reserves and, in the cities, is intimately linked with the deadly duo
of guns and gangs. It has an especially devastating effect among
certain ethnic minorities. "These kids get outcomes from today's
stimulant marijuana that are very hard to describe to someone who's
only familiar with pot," Mr. Smyth says.

How did such a nice drug turn so nasty? Blame a revolution in
greenhouse technology, along with genetic engineering and the
cross-breeding of seed stock from Asia and the Middle East. This
potent stuff now dominates the market. The UN says it is "distinct
enough in appearance and potency to be considered a separate drug."
The evidence shows that it can be highly addictive, especially for
kids who suffer from depression, behavioural problems or attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder. It causes paranoia, aggressiveness
and psychosis, and it sharply elevates the risk of schizophrenia. It
is very bad, indeed, for people with asthma or multiple sclerosis.

A decade ago, The Independent, a major British daily, led the
campaign to decriminalize marijuana. In March, it ran a front-page
editorial under the headline "Cannabis: An Apology." It changed its
stand "because of the growing weight of evidence that cannabis
contributes to mental illness."

Griffith Edwards, founder of Britain's National Addiction Centre, has
also done an about-face. "Thirty or forty years ago, I was writing
that cannabis was a drug without harm and dependence, but I've had to
eat my hat." This month, the BBC has been running a series of
confessional stories about mental-health problems and soaring
addiction rates caused by today's cannabis. Meantime, in the
Netherlands, the formerly tolerant Dutch are closing dozens of
"coffee houses" where you could once toke up to your heart's content.

Unfortunately, you won't learn any of this if you live in Canada,
where the people who run the media and make drug policy are stuck
back in the groovy 1960s. In fact, we're rather proud of our
enlightened cannabis policies - so different from those of the
backward Americans - and our world-class B.C. bud. We treat pot
activists such as Marc Emery as folk heroes. Even our health
authorities - the ones who are demanding zero tolerance for
cigarettes and trans fats - continue to promote the view that
cannabis is harmless. Health Canada has decreed that it's medically
"effective" for people with various chronic conditions, a position
that could come back to haunt the government when the lawsuits begin to fly.

"In the real world, marijuana today is no longer about the children
of our elites headed for higher education," Mr. Smyth says. "It is
very much about future hope and opportunities for non-academic kids."
He's haunted by the young lives he's seen destroyed. And he's waiting
for the day when our enlightened leaders will start to smarten up.