MARIJUANA PROBLEM: PARENTS DON'T WANT IT LEGAL

Ordinary folks think proposal is a dopey idea The debate about
legalizing marijuana is our bad penny.

It never goes away. This week, four former Vancouver mayors released
a letter in which they urged politicians to legalize and regulate the
use of pot in B.C. They advance a reasoned, if familiar, argument:
Prohibition does not work, and it creates a criminal market, fuels
gang activity, draining untold millions in public funds in failed
enforcement. With regulation, goes the argument, we could control the
sale, strength and quality of the drug, while earning millions in
fees or taxation.

All good. Except for one biggish problem.

Ordinary people don't buy it. Ordinary people are not going to read
academic studies, unravel complex science on addictions or solve a
harmbenefit equation.

They are probably going to ask themselves: Would you buy a bag of
weed and give it to your teenager?

The hell you would, Mom and Dad.One afternoon this week, I sat down
with a mother who wanted t! o quietly scream about the media's
depiction of marijuana as a soft, even helpful drug, that the state
should legalize and control.

She has a son, 20. He began using marijuana when he was about 14. It
soon turned into daily use, sometimes before school.

So school became a problem. "He just seemed so spaced out all the
time," said his mother, a 50-ish federal public servant. "He became
very secretive about where he was going." Within a couple of years,
he was dealing.

Then he was expelled.

He was a good athlete, but gave up sports, gave up his sports friends
and soon ran with another crowd.

It changed the whole dynamic of the family. "I would dread coming
home at night because I didn't know who I'd find there." He managed
to finish high school and now has a part-time job in retail.

He is living on his own. She believes he is addicted to marijuana and
that it has robbed him of his ambition.

She is unclear, even though she is his mother, what he is interested
in. Video games, ! television, music, booze, and pot; not much else.
"You just fe! el powerless," she said. How many times, in how many
homes, is this scene being repeated?

In a nutshell, that is why state control of marijuana will probably
never happen.

An ordinary citizen, a garden-variety parent, does not want to be
party to the creation of a nation of young pot-heads. Period. You can
read all the literature in the world, every website on the Internet,
about whether marijuana is or isn't addictive, but that will not
erase what you see with your own eyes. The boy grew up in a
middle-class suburb, with many advantages. He was taken to
counsellors, psychologists, doctors.

He couldn't seem to stick with a program.

His parents have joined support groups and sought help from the Royal
Ottawa Mental Health Centre.The boy has an older brother, who is thriving.

It vexes the mother how one could be so focused and the other so
lacking in motivation. The young man suffers from depression. He
tells his parents that the marijuana "relaxes him" and that he
doesn't wa! nt to talk about it as a possible problem.

So she feels stuck.

There are lots of statistics out there about marijuana use, some of
them worrisome.

According to a large survey done by the Centre for Addiction and
Mental Health, about 46 per cent of Grade 12 students in Ontario had
used cannabis in the preceding year (83 per cent had used alcohol;
only 20 per cent had smoked cigarettes). When looking at the Grade 7
to 12 population, the survey found this translates into about 261,500
students who smoked pot at least once in the past year. About three
per cent of all students "may have" a cannabis dependency. The good
news is that, generally speaking, cannabis use is down among teenagers.

Now mom just hopes her son will bottom out with his use of marijuana
and gain some clarity about what his life is all about.

She is not a zealous woman.

She is not decrying marijuana as the great evil of our age or the
root of a national crisis.

She would merely like to say, from her point of! view, that it is
addictive and certainly not harmless. "I don't think ! it is harmless.

My son is certainly being harmed by it." That, your worships, is why
one letter from four mayors, however experienced, does not change
what a million parents see with their own eyes.