Pubdate: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 Source: Medicine Hat News (CN AB) Copyright: 2004 Alberta Newspaper Group, Inc. Contact: http://www.medicinehatnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1833 Author: Canadian Press Read: the report http://www.statcan.ca/english/ads/82-003-XPE/pdf/15-4-04.pdf Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) CANADA UP IN SMOKE: STATSCAN TORONTO -- It seems more Canadians than ever are going to pot -- smoking up, toking up and generally embracing the sweet weed. In fact, the proportion of Canadians who admit to indulging in marijuana or hashish almost doubled over 13 years -- and the highest rates of use were among teens, a report released Wednesday by Statistics Canada suggests. That translates into about three million Canadians, or 12.2 per cent, who used cannabis at least once in the previous year, the federal agency said in its 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey. In 1989, the figure was 6.5 per cent. Despite the apparent upswing in pot usage, Prime Minister Paul Martin said in Ottawa that his government remains committed to marijuana decriminalization and will reintroduce legislation after Parliament resumes in October. And Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh said that while he is concerned about the reported rise in drug use, he's unsure arguments that decriminalization would further increase marijuana use "have any validity." "My view is that, if you make something illegal, some people are more attracted to it," he said. "It's just the high in getting something in a stealth(y) fashion ... If you allow people to possess it in small quantities for personal use, the allure kind of disappears for some people." While the issue of decriminalizing cannabis has been much in the media spotlight, the latest national figures don't reflect those discussions: this survey was done in 2002, the year before an Ontario court judge made a precedent-setting ruling that possessing a small amount of pot was not illegal, and before Jean Chretien tried to ram through a decriminalization bill before stepping down as prime minister. The hike in marijuana's popularity comes as no surprise to Edward Adlaf, a research scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, which has reported similar trends, particularly from its surveys of Ontario students. "We've been finding during the '90s among students -- and these are seventh graders to 12th graders -- that fewer and fewer students perceive great risk in using cannabis," said Adlaf, noting that about three-quarters of Ontario students surveyed in the early '90s believed marijuana or hash posed a danger of physical harm; by 2003, that figure had plummeted to just over half. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin