Keeping the legal drinking age at twenty-one years old may be a good idea, according to a new set of recommendations from Canada.

• Hubert Sacy, director general of the research team Educ'alcool, said that adolescents should not have access to alcohol because their brains are still developing.
  
• Adolescents and teens who drink alcohol are more likely to abuse the drug and put themselves in risky situations.
  
• Alcohol can adversely affect the development of a teenagers organs, muscles and reproductive system, and can also negatively affect hormonal levels.
  
• In the new report, Stacy noted that people who start drinking in middle school are more likely to have problems with delinquency, emotional control and alcohol dependence by the time they are in their mid-twenties.

Labels: alcohol, legal drinking age, canada

Posted By: Aspen/CRC 0 Comments

Sniffer dogs in Canada will be taking a back seat in the coming months. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 6-3 to tighten the leash on use of the canines for public sweeps, siding with a high-school student and a Vancouver man who both said they were searched illegally.

"In both cases, police violated the charter right against unreasonable search and seizure by allowing their dogs to embark on general sniff searches of a school and bus depot without more concrete reasons to suspect drugs were present, the Supreme Court said." [Source: Canwest News Service]

Sniffer dogs will likely still be used in airports and along the border, Canwest reported, two areas that werent addressed in the Supreme Courts ruling.

Labels: laws, canada, privacy

Posted By: Aspen/CRC 0 Comments

Canadian parents got some good news this week, when a study of nearly 30,000 youth in British Columbia revealed that fewer young people are using alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs:

Twenty-nine percent of 13-year-olds said they have drunk alcohol, down from 34 percent five years earlier. For 15-year-olds, 58 percent said they had drunk alcohol, down from 65 percent in 2003. ...

"With all the negative stereotyping we see and hear about young people in our province, it is encouraging to note that smoking, alcohol use and marijuana use have all declined since the last survey in 2003," Annie Smith, executive director of the [McCreary Centre Society, which conducted the study] after the report was released.

The survey indicates that the typical age when kids first try marijuana is 13 and 14, but the overall number of youth who have tried marijuana shrank from 37 percent in 2003 to 30 percent in 2008. (Source: The Vancouver Sun)

The news wasn't all good, reported Sun writer Pamela Fayerman. "While use of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and amphetamines declined, the number of students who said they had ever used other drugs, like prescription pills (15 per cent) and hallucinogens (nine per cent), increased slightly," Fayerman wrote.

Any level of adolescent substance abuse is, of course, cause for concern -- and the Canadian study indicates that much work remains to be done. But the recent news out of Canada will surely be heartening to parents, teachers, and others who are working to keep young people away from alcohol and other drugs.

Labels: alcohol, adolescence, canada, drugs, teenagers

Posted By: Aspen/CRC 0 Comments

A new Canadian law gives police permission to test drivers for both alcohol and drug use when impaired driving is suspected. The law, titled the Tackling Violent Crime Act, went into effect July 2, 2008.

"The new legislation empowers Canadian police who suspect a driver of being impaired by any drug, illegal, prescription, or over the counter, to conduct a Standardized Field Sobriety Test, a roadside test of physical coordination. If found to be impaired, the driver must submit to a mandatory Drug Evaluation and Classification (DEC) assessment...."

A DEC assessment is an hourlong 12-step process that is conducted by a Drug Recognition Expert. The law also includes new penalties, including a minimum $1,000 fine for the first offense, and no less than 30 days in jail for the second. Source: CNW Group

Labels: canada, drunk_driving, sobriety_test

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments