Today's guest host was Kathleen Petty.

Satire

It's Thursday, July 12th.

A United Nations report says more Canadians smoke pot than in any other industrialized country. The report also says Canadian marijuana is up to ten times as potent as American pot but costs about half as much.

Currently, in unrelated news, the Canadian dollar closed higher today thanks to strong export growth and unexpectedly low productivity south of the border.

This is The Current.

Potent Pot – UN Report

According to a United Nations report released earlier this week, Canada is home to four times as many marijuana users as any other industrialized country. Nearly 17 per cent of Canadians between 15 and 64 smoked pot at least once last year ... well above the global average of 3.8 per cent. Only Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, Ghana and Zambia ranked -- ahem -- higher.

What has some people really worried though isn't the number of Canadians smoking pot but rather the intensity of our Marijuana. Thomas Pietschmann is with the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, we aired a clip of what he told us.

And it's that super-charged strength that has some people saying it's high time for harsher drug laws. That may already be happening. According to the Canadian Press newswire, the number of Canadians arrested for marijuana possession jumped by 20 to 50 per cent in major cities last year ... this after the Conservative Government killed a Liberal bill to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of pot.

So to discuss how to combat, control or manage our little national habit, we were joined by Barry MacKnight. He is the chair of the Drug Abuse Committee for the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs and the Chief of the Fredericton Police Force. And he joined us from our studio in Fredericton.

And Lester Grinspoon is a psychiatrist and Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Medical School and the author of a number of books on marijuana. He was at his home in Wellesely, Massachusetts.

Listen to The Current:Part 1

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The Current: Part 2

Letters

Thursday is mail day on The Current and this morning Kathleen Petty was joined by our producer Pedro Sanchez for a look at the mail.

Embeds Documentary (Repeat)

Last summer, the Canadian military went to great lengths to turn Canadian Forces Base Petawawa into a fictional failed state called "West Isle." It was all part of a mock training exercise called "Vigilant Guardian" and a big part of the exercise was teaching the soldiers how to interact with the media. So the military invited a group of journalism students to play the role of "embedded reporters."

The Current producer Dominic Girard tagged along for the ride and he produced this documentary. It originally aired last October on The Current.

Music Bridge

Artist: Ray Montford
Cut: CD1 “May It Begin”
CD: “The Early Sessions”
Label: Softail Records
Spine #: ES04CD

Last Word

Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Destination Wellville ... the story of one Canadian town and its bid to get healthy.

Listen to The Current:Part 2

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

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