Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I think what we're talking about here is the harms that you have discovered in young people, very young people. We're talking about a particular age group, which I think is really important to note. It's not like if everybody uses marijuana this is going to happen. It's an age group thing we're talking about. I think we need to differentiate between the medicinal properties of marijuana, medical marijuana, and recreational marijuana.
That's something I would like to clarify here, that there are actually benefits of marijuana medically. We know that we have drugs made that will create those benefits. But as I keep saying, we have two legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol, which have, with the exception of the odd glass of red wine that we keep hearing will help to bring down a person's cholesterol, no positive medicinal properties, unless you want to talk about rubbing alcohol.
The bottom line is, and I know that people have discussed this, if you want to utilize the medicinal properties of marijuana, there is a way to do that. We've heard Dr. Sabet talk a little bit about different ways one can use marijuana in an appropriate manner. I have the concern he has about e-cigarettes and these sorts of vaporization, etc., but I think we need to focus on the reason for this particular study which focuses only on the risks and not at all on any benefits.
When we look at the three drugs which you cannot separate, the three drugs that are used recreationally, at least we know one of them has medicinal uses. The big question then is how do you utilize the positive aspects of marijuana? How do you also in terms of the recreational use of marijuana recognize that you have a whole group of young people smoking it, and therefore there might be a need to regulate the age at which they can get it? I think this is what people talk about when they talk about regulating marijuana. It's like you can't buy alcohol...well, you can if you wanted to, but you're not allowed legally to buy alcohol under a certain age. You're not allowed legally to buy cigarettes under a certain age. But what we have seen time and time again is that every time prohibition has been tried, organized crime has stepped in. We only have to look at the 1920s and 1930s in terms of alcohol. We have to see what happened with heroin which used to be a usable drug back in the Victorian era, which then because of trade disputes became an illegal drug.
The question is how you square the circle with a drug that has certain properties that we may want to use them for, but we know there are certain modes of usage that are dangerous and we know there is an age group that we have to cut off, unless of course it's prescribed by a physician for a specific reason. So how do we square that circle? That's basically what I'm trying to say. I'd like us to just take the elephant in the room and put it smack on the table and dissect it and say, “What do we do if we turn to prohibition?“ Then we have no way of controlling the young kids who use it. Just like when we increased the tax on cigarettes and the price increased, we saw this cross-border thing happening and young people were buying them on the black market. Tobacco became a drug that was pushed.
I would like to hear some thoughtful ideas from you about how we utilize a drug that has positive impacts, stop the use below a certain age, and how we find a way of talking about the problem that we're discussing here, the recreational use of it.