The Globe and Mail
July 16, 2007
Listen, Canada, we need to talk.
It's about your little pot habit.
Just look at these numbers from the United Nations. More people smoke in Canada than in nearly every other country. More than Jamaica. More than the Netherlands.
Dude, that has to tell you something.
Do you want to end up like Papua New Guinea or Micronesia?
Stop giggling. They are too real countries.
Sigh. For the last time, no, it's not 4:20 yet.
Canada is a nation of stoners.
According to the United Nations' 2007 World Drug Report released last week, Canadians lead the industrialized world in marijuana smoking. Canadians are four times more likely to have smoked pot in the past year than residents of nearly every other country: 16.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 64 use marijuana, compared to a global average of 3.8 per cent.
Why so high?
While experts aren't concerned about Canadians' pot-smoking habits – they worry about abuse, not recreational use – they agree that the country's fondness for weed says something about our national character.
But opinions vary widely on what, exactly, it says.
“That's a reflection on our national accountability,” says Albert de Goias, director of the Toronto-based Prometheum Institute, an addiction counselling centre.
Dr. de Goias says the pot-smoking rates don't bother him, and he rarely sees people seeking treatment for marijuana dependence. But he thinks it's symptomatic of a collective lack of ambition.
“We have a very progressive economy, and a tendency to be overprotective of personal rights, much more so than other countries. We have a tendency to feel we have a right to get everything without really having to earn it.”
Some pot smokers, however, say Canada's high rate of recreational use is not because we're a nation of slackers, but merely a side effect of the country's go-getter work ethic. Canadians work hard and, unlike Europeans, don't get 10 weeks of vacation or two-hour lunches – so we find other ways to unwind.
“You're putting in way too many hours at work, you just want to go out and relax,” says one recreational user, a business owner and married father of three who smokes pot several times a month. Marijuana, he explains, allows busy professionals to “maximize your leisure time.”
“You go to a bar, you're hanging out with friends – if you're stoned, everybody's funnier,” he says. “If you're not sure about a movie? Get high, you'll like it better.”this is notes
Pot's mainstream popularity shows how far Canada has progressed (or drifted, depending on your perspective) from its strait-laced roots. While still illegal, marijuana has gained widespread social acceptance in Canada.
“Canadians have come far and fast from the kind of pasty white Protestant culture of the early post-War period to a much more diverse society founded on individual freedom,” says Rudyard Griffiths, co-founder of the Dominion Institute. “Soft drugs are probably part of that.”
In 2001, Canada became the first country to legalize medical marijuana. In 2003, Jean Chrétien's Liberals tabled a bill to decriminalize marijuana possession, but the legislation died in 2006.
Still, 55 per cent of Canadians believe marijuana should be legal, according to an Angus Reid poll conducted this June.
And many smokers aren't letting the current laws stop them.
Canadians are more likely to smoke pot than people in the Netherlands, where cannabis is legal yet only 6.8 per cent of the population had used it in the past year. The only countries more likely to spark up are Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, Ghana and Zambia.
Canadians are no slouches when it comes to other mind-altering substances, either. Alcohol use is 30 per cent higher than the global average, and Canada ranks fourth, after Spain, England and the United States, for cocaine use – 2.3 per cent of the population tried cocaine in the past year.
But Canadians' laissez-faire attitude has limits, Mr. Griffiths says. For example, attitudes about pornography are much more conservative here than in Europe. And lighting a tobacco cigarette earns you more dirty looks in some circles than lighting a joint.
“I don't think we're slouching toward Gomorrah,” Mr. Griffiths says.
While some pin Canada's penchant for pot on social liberalism, others say it's just the opposite – the illegality of marijuana actually boosts its appeal.
“The more something is prohibited, the more it becomes appealing to some people,” says Benedikt Fischer, a drug policy expert at the University of Victoria and a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
He cautions that patterns of use are more significant than one-time use, and he notes that the U.N.'s method of counting anyone who's smoked pot in the past year casts a very wide net. He's not surprised Canada's numbers are so high.
“We're a very prohibitionist society when it comes to psychoactive drugs, or fun, or anything that has a flavour of immorality,” Dr. Fischer says. “This is a cultural knee-jerk reaction, the rejection of unaccepted norms.”
Robin Ellins, proprietor of the Friendly Stranger, a head shop in Toronto, agrees.
“Consumption would go down if it was legal,” he says, as shoppers browse among ornate bongs and hemp clothing. “That's definitely a big part of the attraction.”
Mr. Ellins thinks Canada's commanding lead in the global drug survey might be traced to a positive national trait: honesty.
Whereas some countries keep their reefer madness quiet, Canadians are proud pot smokers.
“We have a willingness to admit that we actually do partake,” he says.
