MORE ALBERTA KIDS ARE GOING TO POT!

If the biggest Alberta survey of kids and drugs here in years is anything
to go by, Joe Camel should just give up and start selling bongs instead.

The Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission's research, the most
comprehensive in a decade, shows kids between Grades 10 and 12 are almost
twice as likely to try pot than cigarettes. The agency noted, however, that
most of the 3,394 kids in Grades 7 to 12 surveyed didn't try either.

The survey, accurate to within a percentage point and completed over two
months last winter, found 42% of high school students tried marijuana at
least once over the course of a year. Just 24.6% tried cigarettes.

That might be attributable to massive anti-smoking campaigns over the last
few years, noted AADAC researcher Art Dyer. "That's entirely possible.
Maybe we'll need to look at that in the context of our tobacco reduction
strategy," he said.

"But one of the perhaps most important points to consider overall is that
most kids don't use drugs and don't have problems with them. One of the
dangerous things is we end up tarring all the kids with the same brush."

The study also looked at why kids fall into drug use, citing age, peers,
family and poor school conduct as precursors. Kids with strong families who
are closely monitored by parents and who have good social skills were less
likely.

As the Capital Health region's deputy medical officer of health, Dr. Marcia
Johnson is ecstatic the study has been done and that AADAC plans to repeat
the exercise every two years. Whether correlations can be drawn between
such statistics and education campaigns "may be something that's worth
looking at," she said.

"Once we're able to see the whole report we can determine how much we can
utilize the information. But the fact that they're going to be doing this
potentially every two years is very positive."

The numbers surprised local parent John Wieczorek. He has five kids between
three and 15. "Maybe the word has gotten out to people that marijuana is
not as harmful as people always thought," he suggests.

Or, as 25-year-old city resident Jeremiah Sorrell suggests, the reason may
be more practical. "Marijuana costs less than cigarettes. If you can't
afford $10 a pack you're not going to smoke. It costs a lot less than that
to smoke pot."