Almost 30 per cent of young adults aged 18 to 24 admit to having used the drug in the past year. Not that far behind are 15- to 17-year-olds, 17.5 per cent of whom report using the drug.
The Quebec government is set to raise the legal age of cannabis consumption from 18 to 21. “It’s dangerous for developing children,” said Premier François Legault last month. “I want to send a clear signal.” But as McGill University law professor Daniel Weinstock argues in an essay for the new book High Time: The Legalization and Regulation of Cannabis in Canada, current prohibitions may already be putting young people at greater risk than ever.
Only 1.5 per cent of older Canadians say the same. This means that people who consume marijuana in the highest proportions are those who are also most at risk from it. The first thing we need to determine is what will count as the threshold of success. For the sake of argument, let’s hypothesize that increased enforcement, better educational programs, and a ban on advertising aimed at young Canadians will reduce youth consumption by 50 per cent in the 18-to-25 age group. This would mean that roughly 10 per cent, rather than the roughly 20 per cent who obtain the drug at present, would continue to consume unregulated, and possibly more dangerous marijuana.
Now let’s return to the case of marijuana. In my view it would be wrong to knowingly implement policies that would foreseeably give rise to a significant proportion of the 18-to-25 age group consuming marijuana in conditions more dangerous than those that we could create through a harm-reduction-based policy.
I have no illusions as to the political “saleability” of this policy proposal. I confess that even I found myself resisting it.
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