CANNABIS USE IS UP, BUT POT CRIMES ARE GOING DOWN

OTTAWA • The number of cannabis-related offences reported to police declined for the fifth straight year, Statistics Canada said Monday, despite the percentage of Canadians consuming the drug on the rise.

The StatsCan annual report on police-reported crime was released the same day that the president of the New Brunswick Medical Society issued a stark warning that the coming legalization of marijuana in Canada doesn’t mean that it is safe and the public needs to know the risks of consuming pot.

“There’s somewhat of a normalization around marijuana use and I think some of the public really don’t understand there are significant health concerns associated with marijuana use,” Dr. Lynn Murphy-Kaulbeck said.

StatsCan said there were about 55,000 offences related to marijuana reported to police in 2016, about 6,000 fewer than reported the year before. The agency said police charged 17,733 people with the possession of pot last year, a drop of about 3,600 from 2015.

The Liberal government has introduced legislation to legalize marijuana by next summer, but won’t decriminalize simple possession in the face of NDP requests to do so in the interim.

The medical society is launching a public education campaign on the health risks associated with marijuana consumption, ahead of Ottawa’s commitment to make pot legal across Canada by July 2018. But Murphy-Kaulbeck said too often governments only look at the financial gains without looking at the long-term impact.

“It’s very much like smoking or alcohol — you have your tax and your revenue from that, but down the road there’s great cost that comes with treating all the effects that come from these substances,” she said.

She said the health risks inherent with the use of marijuana are clear, particularly for people under the age of 25, and include addiction, worsening of substance abuse and attention deficits.

“Marijuana use up to that point does have the potential to affect brain development. As well, the research does show the use of marijuana can be related in young people to psychiatric disorders,” she said.

Statistics Canada said the combined rate of drugrelated offences for substances other than cannabis and cocaine, which has also been on the decline, has been increasing since 2010.

That included a seven per cent increase in the number of police-reported offences related to the possession of drugs such as prescription drugs, including opioids like fentanyl, LSD and so-called “date rape” drugs in 2016.

Meanwhile, the national crime rate did not change in 2016. It has been on a downward trend since the early 1990s, although there were increases reported in both 2003 and 2015.