St. Albert youth are getting mixed-messages when it comes to risks associated with marijuana, according to the RCMP.
While it's not unusual to receive push-back about the risks associated with marijuana during high school presentations, Cpl. Laurel Kading, crime prevention officer with St. Albert RCMP, said that with the election of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who campaigned on a promise to legalize marijuana, students are even more reluctant to acknowledge the dangers of marijuana.
"When we talk to kids in schools, they're asking a lot of questions. Kids hear about medical marijuana; they hear about the elections; that the prime minister elect is going to make marijuana legal. It's very confusing for them. They don't understand why they're hearing from some people that it's not good for them, but from other people that it's (OK)," she said.
Kading and medical professionals from Alberta Health Services spoke during a public presentation at the library on Tuesday, hosted as part of National Addictions Awareness Week.
They explained that despite what students and politicians may think, marijuana is dangerous.
The difference between medical marijuana and what is sold on the street – and eventually in stores once legalized – is that it has been stripped of THC, the chemical responsible for the psychological effects of marijuana.
New cultivation, fertilization and seed production techniques have increased the potency of today's illicit marijuana by 10 to 20 times. In 1974, THC levels were one per cent or less. Currently, some strains of marijuana can count THC levels as high as 25 per cent, said Ramon Flores, an addictions counsellor with AHS.
Users have also found ways to extract THC from cannabis in order to create a more powerful high. The resin-like substance, commonly referred to as wax, shatter or budder, produced using a technique called dabbing, counts levels between 70 to 90 per cent.
One or two drops is as effective as smoking a joint, Flores said, making it a very potent and dangerous substance. In some cases dabbing can cause psychosis.
Young people often use vaporizers and e-cigarettes to consume the substance, which does not emit the odour of marijuana, according to Flores.
Marijuana can also act as a gateway drug. The public heard from a former addict from Spruce Grove named Brody who described his journey from drinking beers and smoking pot at age 12 to staying up four days straight after trying meth at 14 to landing a four-year stint in lockup after committing crimes to fuel his habit and his eventual recovery.
Dr. Avi Aulakh, a psychiatrist working for AHS in the downtown Edmonton addictions treatment centre, warned that the younger kids are when they try drugs, the more likely it is for them to develop an addiction because teenage and young adult brains are still developing.
The rate of use in 2013 was three times higher among Canadian youth aged 15-24 (24.4 per cent) compared to adults (eight per cent).
Fentanyl in St. Albert
The powerful opioid that has caused 145 deaths in Alberta during the first half of the year is responsible for at least one death in the community.
Not a new drug, fentanyl has been around since the 1970s and is prescribed to manage chronic pain.
Following provincial bans on the distribution of Oxycontin in 2012 to address the nation's dangerously high abuse of prescription medication, heroin and fentanyl became the preferred high for opioid users, said Flores.
But the most fentanyl-related deaths have been seen among recreational drug users. That's because fentanyl is often sold as other drugs and trace amounts of fentanyl can be found in almost every type of illicit drug, said Aulakh.
Risk of overdose is high among recreational drug users because they don't know what they're taking.
"Our understanding is that you get your tablet with pockets of fentanyl through it and it's kind of like the lottery," said Kading.
Two milligrams of fentanyl – the equivalent of two grains of salt – can kill a 200-pound person. The opioid can also be absorbed through the skin.
Kading said the St. Albert RCMP started seeing fentanyl in the community a couple of years ago and that the opioid is both available and actively sought in the community. At least one person has died in St. Albert because of fentanyl.
Drug use a community problem
Crime rates can be used as a barometer for drug use in a community, said Kading, Motor vehicle theft and property crime often fuel the buying of drugs.
People showing up in hospitals with unexplained injuries are often indicative of violence between groups that use or sell drugs.
This criminality affects the entire community, making it a community problem, said Kading, and not just for parents with kids who use.
