SENATORS ADMIT TRYING CANNABIS IN DISTANT PAST

But Authors Of Controversial Drug Report Say They Are Not Advocating
Marijuana Use

OTTAWA -- Edmonton Senator Tommy Banks inhaled marijuana more than 40 years
ago, but he wasn't very high on the experience.

"Oh, sure," said the 65-year-old pianist and Liberal senator from Edmonton.
"It was in 1957 or 1958 and I was playing in a concert in Seattle and I
tried it, but I didn't like it.

"And I didn't exhale," he added. "But I'm constantly around people who use
it. And they're not musicians, by the way. It's mostly the accountants and
lawyers."

At least two of the nine members of the Senate Special Committee on Illegal
Drugs, which has unanimously recommended that Canada legalize marijuana,
admit to taking a toke.

The committee chairman, Progressive Conservative Senator Pierre-Claude
Nolin, 51, has admitted on the record that he once inhaled hashish. But the
Quebec lawyer said he never tried it again.

"I once in my life smoked hashish when I was in junior college," Mr. Nolin
said in 1996. "I don't know why I didn't follow up on that. Maybe it was
the cost."

The Senate committee members who wrote the controversial report that
recommends making it legal for anyone aged 16 and older to smoke marijuana
hardly fit the image of cannabis champions.

Nearly half the committee from Canada's chamber of sober second thought are
senior citizens; Progressive Conservative Senator Eileen Rossiter is the
oldest at 73. The group includes Liberals and Conservatives, former
business executives and academics.

"I think we need to examine serious public concerns, and one of them is the
use of cannabis," said Sharon Carstairs, a Liberal senator from Manitoba
and government leader of the Senate.

The 60-year-old former high-school teacher said she has never tried
marijuana, "not because I thought it was a dreadful thing, but because I
have asthma."

The Senate's report, issued this week, has sparked national debate about
Canada's marijuana laws and drawn criticism from police groups and the
United States. Among other things, the report calls for a national drug
policy and amnesty for 600,000 Canadians convicted of marijuana possession.

Mr. Banks said the notion that senators are a bunch of old fogeys out of
touch with modern-day problems is absurd.

"People have the wrong stereotypes of senators," he said. "This is a highly
contentious issue. We're not marijuana activists. We're looking at the
facts and life the way it is. We're giving people criminal records for
having a joint in their pockets. It's patently absurd."

Justice Minister Martin Cauchon said yesterday he will introduce drug-law
reforms early next year after studying the Senate report and a House of
Commons committee. But it remains doubtful that Canada will legalize cannabis.

"At this point in time, the notion of legalizing marijuana is not possible
from an international point of view," he told reporters in Ottawa.

Mr. Cauchon said he is considering decriminalizing marijuana possession by
removing it from the Criminal Code and making it an offence punishable by
fine instead of a criminal record.

Liberal MP Paddy Torsney, chair of the House of Commons committee studying
non-medical use of drugs, could not say what recommendations will be made
when the report is released in November.

The senators argue that it is time to re-evaluate Canada's methods of
dealing with drug use because hundreds of thousands of Canadians continue
to use marijuana and hash illegally. They say they want a modern model that
stresses education, prevention and treatment.

"There is no thought behind this report other than drugs are bad," Mr.
Banks said. "No one should ever be encouraged to use drugs."

Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper called yesterday for Senate reform,
describing the report's recommendations as "radical" because they are
"almost advocating the use of marijuana." An asthma sufferer, he said he
has never smoked marijuana or anything else.