HIDING 'HEAD SHOP' POINTLESS

The St. James-Assiniboia school board thinks locating a head shop
close to a St. James Collegiate will encourage more high school
students to smoke pot.

Truth be told, the board might be right, but putting any effort into
restricting where such shops can set up is a waste of time.

High school students are going to smoke pot whether they have to go
to the nearby head shop to buy pipes and bongs, or whether they have
to go to the head shop across town.

Try as you might, you are not going to get teenagers to stop smoking pot.

That having been said, the school board might be right that more kids
will try marijuana if a head shop is more visible and accessible to them.

However, it's hard to imagine that being the tipping point for more
than a handful of teens, which would be a drop in the bucket
considering how many students try pot these days.

Marijuana culture is everywhere. It's in the music teens listen to,
it's in movies and TV shows, and it's all over the Internet they surf
every day.

Moving a head shop a couple of hundred metres will not change that.

Plus, it's not as though smoking implements are hard to come by.

All anyone has to do is head out and buy rolling papers at Safeway or
7-Eleven, and there are plenty of those located close to schools.

Winnipeg has no shortage of beer vendors and government liquor stores
located within a quick walk from schools, and there is a legitimate
argument to be made that alcohol is much more damaging to people and
to society than marijuana.

The difference, of course, is that marijuana is illegal, and alcohol is not.

Say what you want about marijuana, but the fact remains that it is
against the law to smoke it.

Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz says he does not condone any business --
legal or not -- that encourages people to break the law. He suggests
anyone who has an issue with head shops to present it formally when
the city reviews its zoning laws in the coming months.

That's reasonable advice and it's positive democracy in action.

But for anyone who takes the mayor up on his suggestion, please bear
this in mind: Trying to stop teenagers from smoking pot is like
standing by the ocean and asking the tide not to come in.

Acceptance of marijuana is growing and lawmakers are trending towards
looser restrictions. Trying to hide a store a few blocks down the
street is not going to change that.