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Teen Pot Smokers Target Of Addictions Campaign
Pubdate: Tue, 22 Nov 2005
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2005 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502
Author: Carol Sanders
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?224 (Cannabis and Driving)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
TEEN POT SMOKERS TARGET OF ADDICTIONS CAMPAIGN
HIGH school pot smokers who get behind the wheel are the targets of
addictions awareness week that kicked off yesterday in Manitoba at
the Circle of Life Thunderbird House.
In Manitoba, more than 40 per cent of high school students have used
marijuana, according to the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, one of
20 community groups involved in awareness week. Canadians ages 14
through 25 have the highest rate of pot use in the world, according
to the Canadian Public Health Association. It launched a national
poster campaign yesterday after a recent survey found that many
youths think pot smoking doesn't impair their ability to drive a vehicle.
The poster shows commercial airline pilots lighting a joint in the
cockpit as they prepare for take-off. The caption says: "If it
doesn't make sense here, why does it make sense when you drive?"
"Teens weren't aware that driving under the influence of cannabis was
a problem," said Dr. Christiane Poulin, Canadian research chair in
population health and addictions at Dalhousie University in Halifax,
and the force behind a standardized student drug use survey in the
Atlantic provinces.
In Ontario, 22 per cent of youths who smoked cannabis reported
driving an hour after smoking up, according to the CPHA. Poulin said
she expects rates will be comparable across Canada. "We're in this
together." The new generation of drivers has been indoctrinated in a
culture that has tabooed drunk driving, said Poulin. It hasn't gotten
the message that getting high also counts as impaired driving and is
illegal, said the medical doctor who noted that cannabis use among
Canadians has doubled in the last 20 years.
In Manitoba more than half of the boys in high school have four or
more drinks at one sitting, with one in five having driven within an
hour of drinking, according to the AFM's Alcohol and Drug Use in
Manitoba Students report issued earlier this year.
"The public campaign gets beyond cannabis use and right to critical
issue of impaired driving," said Poulin.
For northern Inuit people, the rate of pot use is three times that of
the rest of Canada, said Tracy O'Hearn, director of Ajunnginiq Centre
of the National Aboriginal Health Organization in Ottawa. The rate of
drug-impaired driving accidents "seem to be pretty high," said O'Hearn.
There haven't been any recent studies, but there is plenty of
anecdotal evidence in local news media reports in the north, she
said. Combatting the problem in the North is another story.
Impaired driving in Winnipeg conjures up images of cars weaving
through city streets, in the far north it's an even bigger problem
that includes young people on snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles.
"We have to broaden our thinking and approach and make it more
relevant to the arctic."
Mothers Against Drunk Driving said the addictions awareness week
campaign echoes one they launched against drug-impaired driving this
fall before students headed back to school.
"The MADD organization has been pushing on this for a while," said
MADD's Winnipeg chapter spokesman, Rod Sudbury. The federal
government's decriminalization of marijuana use didn't take into
account people who would use it then get behind the wheel, he said.
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