I just want to quickly say, as a mother of young teens, that the difference between my children.... It is Vancouver, after all; someone is going to offer them marijuana. They're going to offer them marijuana at school, as they did when they were in junior high school. When they wanted to drink, they were able to come to me and ask me if I would buy them alcohol. I think you need to understand that alcohol is regulated and much more difficult for children to buy. Children buy drugs from other children, and it creates a problem, I find, in parenting. I would much rather have had the ability to have a discussion with my children before they used marijuana. I don't know if they've used other drugs.
I just want to make that comment, because Canada was much admired internationally for many years when alcohol.... In our province anyway, you had to go in and write what you wanted on a piece of paper; they didn't have advertising for liquor and you didn't wander the aisles and look for nice bottles. Liquor in British Columbia was very controlled. We had a very low consumption rate, as a result. I think that needs to be perhaps examined. There are two things that add tremendously to an increased amount of drug use or alcohol use: a completely free and open market where there is a lot of advertising; and prohibition, which seems to increase the availability because of the profit--and the drug cartels really want a lot of people to use a lot of drugs. It seems odd to us, but they have their ways of increasing drug use, the black market I mean. What is it? Regulate, control, discourage. That really does work.