Pubdate: Sun, 27 Nov 2011
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2011 The Ottawa Citizen
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Kelly Egan

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.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom