Pubdate: Wed, 29 May 2002
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2002 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: Henry Aubin

NEW DRUG RULES WOULD HURT KIDS

The debate over whether to relax the marijuana ban hardly seems to be a 
debate anymore. To judge from media coverage, almost everyone who speaks 
out on the issue is for a liberalized policy.

That includes Senator Pierre Claude Nolin. He's chairman of the Senate 
Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which holds public hearings on the 
issue tomorrow and Friday in Montreal. It's precisely because the Senate 
has such a stodgy image that the pro-liberalization forces hope the 
committee's eventual recommendations will carry weight with the Chretien 
government, which doesn't want to get too far out in front of public opinion.

In an interview in Voir, Nolin suggested the way to go might be to 
decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot and to legalize the 
growing of it at home for purposes of personal consumption - rendering it 
as prosaic as basement wine-making.

I hope the committee looks carefully at the logic used by its chairman and 
others aboard the bandwagon.

Pro-liberalization advocates say that pot is not as addictive as alcohol or 
tobacco, that there's no compelling evidence it is a gateway drug and that 
to burden young people with criminal records simply for possessing a joint 
is punitive overkill. On all these points, of course, they are right.

But it's what these advocates do not say that mars their logic.

Never do they mention the effect their idea might have on kids.

Kids? Oh yeah, them. In the rush to reshape the world to baby-boomers' 
wants, they're simply not on the radar.

I don't care what adults do with drugs, soft or hard. But I do care about 
kids - defined here as everyone under 18. Adolescence is a time when you 
have to make sense of the world. Drugs only offer escape from it. If you 
can't deal well with reality, your early decisions on organizing your 
future will suffer.

Teachers tell me the correlation between the high-school dropout rate and 
drugs is glaring. As well, a study published last month in the Canadian 
Media Association Journal says that IQ falls by an average of four points 
among high-schoolers who are regular marijuana smokers. At the time when 
you're laying your life's foundation, that's quite a handicap.

None of the liberalizers ever suggests that it's OK if kids smoke up more 
than they already do. Just about every "reform" scheme applies only to 
adults. But the Achilles heel of these proposals is their inadvertent 
effect on teenagers.

For years, drug counselors have said that the biggest factors in rising 
drug use among adolescents are 1) a growing perception that drug use is 
harmless; 2) a changing view of the morality of taking drugs; and 3) rising 
availability. With their loud minimization of pot's effects on health and 
their harrumphing about current laws, the pro-pot lobby is already giving 
impetus to the first two factors. And just about any of the various recipes 
for legalization or decriminalization would inevitably increase the use of 
drugs by adults in public.

If 13-year-olds see 18-year-olds smoking up with impunity on the street 
corner, even more than they do already, it's going to be that much harder 
to keep this forbidden fruit from them. Pot use will become all the more 
conspicuous as a badge of adulthood.

The pro-pot crowd says, "We'll couple liberalization with education 
programs to dissuade kids from being attracted." That's a real howler. The 
lesson of decades of anti-tobacco education campaigns is that such didactic 
exercises are ineffectual. If anything, they have made cigarettes an even 
more enticing symbol of rebellion.

So my advice to Nolin's committee is to apply the sort of cold scrutiny 
that the issue has so far avoided.

We too seldom think of our actions' consequences on following generations. 
We do too little to slash a wretchedly onerous level of government debt. We 
continue to play fast and loose with toxic wastes, steadily ignoring the 
long-term consequences. We resist reining in our SUV lifestyle in face of 
climate change.

I'm not defending the drug-law status quo. But in trying to make those laws 
better, we should keep our eye where it belongs - on the effect on kids.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens