Pubdate: Thu, 19 Jul 2007
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2007, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  http://torontosun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/457
Author: Lyn Cockburn, Special To The Free Press

CANADA GOES TO POT

National Marijuana Use Here Is Highest Among All Developed Countries.

Dieu merci. Thank God for Quebec. They've gotten us anglos off the 
hook yet again.

First, they obligingly claimed the highest rate of opposition in 
Canada to our country's mission in Afghanistan, thus letting the rest 
of us feel properly patriotic.

Never mind that some 200 Royal 22nd Regiment (Van Doos) from CFB 
Valcartier just took off for the land of the poppy -- with 2,000 more 
to follow during the summer. In fact, by September, soldiers from 
Valcartier will have replaced the majority of our existing troops in 
Afghanistan.

Now, in a spectacular gesture of rapprochement with Canada's other 
nine provinces and three territories, they've admitted to doing more 
pot than the rest of us.

For an upsetting week there, as the result of the United Nations 2007 
World Drug Report, it looked like all of Canada was full of smoke -- 
from the marijuana herb, that is, not the Nicotiania tabacum plant.

The UN report stated that Canadians use marijuana four times more 
than people in any other developed country. Some 16.8 per cent of 
Canadians between 15 and 64 used pot in 2006.

By comparison, the figure is 12.6 per cent in the U.S., 8.7 per cent 
in Britain and 0.1 per cent in Japan.

In all, we came in first in the Marijuana Olympics among 
industrialized nations and fifth overall (a far better result than we 
managed in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in which we didn't even manage 
to score a goal).

To put it all in perspective, people in Jamaica evidently smoke 
6.1-per-cent less pot than do Canadians, although anyone who visits 
the Bob Marley museum in Kingston may sniff the air and come to the 
conclusion there's enough ganja in that one location alone to win any 
contest going.

Anyway, those figures stirred up a lot of discussion in Canada.

"Are we a nation of potheads?" asked the newscaster on my TV, and "Do 
Canadians smoke too much marijuana?" demanded a radio talk show host.

One caller had the perfect solution -- 10 lashes at noon every Friday 
on the Parliament grounds in Ottawa for anyone caught smoking a joint.

But not to worry. A breakdown of the figures supplied by Quebec to 
the UN for its report shows that 32 per cent of their students in 
Grades 7 to 9 have toked up at least once in the past year.

And on Tuesday, Quebecers kindly owned up to this fact, leaving B.C. 
in the dust at 18 per cent and Ontario at 11 per cent. Overall, 
marijuana use in Quebec runs 12- per-cent higher than the national average.

In fact, if Quebec were a sovereign nation, it would have finished 
first in pot use among industrial nations, well ahead of Canada. It 
is not known at this point whether pro-or anti-sovereigntists will 
use this figure to their advantage.

By the way, the Netherlands, which has decriminalized marijuana use, 
came in at a trifling 6.1 per cent, a figure which, of course, turned 
on the Canadian proponents of decriminalization.

Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa lawyer who specializes in drug policy 
issues, noted: "The criminal law does not prevent people from using 
marijuana, nor does legalization force people to use it."

Oscapella no doubt approved of the previous Liberal government's 2003 
bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana.

However, Stephen Harper, unaware that Quebec was the main culprit, 
killed the bill when his Conservatives came to power in 2006.

All in all though, thanks to Quebec, nine provinces and three 
territories can stop worrying about their marijuana consumption.

We need wait no longer to exhale.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom