You're over time, sorry, sir.
Evidence of meeting #25 for Health in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was study.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #25 for Health in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was study.
A recording is available from Parliament.
May 6th, 2014 / 9:45 a.m.
Conservative
James Lunney Conservative Nanaimo—Alberni, BC
Thank you very much to our presenters today for stimulating a great discussion.
Dr. Smith, it seems to me that brain development in adolescents ought to be important, certainly to parents and to society. We want people who are cognitively efficient and able to perform important tasks in our society.
Dr. Smith, at what stage is your research now? It started many years ago with Dr. Fried, and you're following up now with 16- to 18-year-olds. Is this research ongoing? What are the next steps in research to help define or better define what's happening in the brain with myelination, with the neural interconnections, and what negative effects might be taking place in that important developmental process?
9:45 a.m.
Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
We imaged the OPPS participants when they were 18 to 21. They're now 25 to 30 years old. I would love to be able to re-image and retest them. They have been in the program since they were born and they have gone off to university or to other parts of the country, so it's hard to find them.
Imaging is expensive. There's not a lot of funding out there for this kind of research, so as much as I'd like to, I would need the funding to be able to do that.
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
9:45 a.m.
Conservative
James Lunney Conservative Nanaimo—Alberni, BC
Obviously, I'm concerned about the harmful effects on mental health.
Dr. Sabet, I think that you mentioned increased risk of mental illness: schizophrenia, psychosis, depression, and anxiety. We are having a lot of incidents today of violence in workplaces: shootings, stabbings. In Nanaimo just last week four people were injured and two died. Those were shootings. There were stabbings in Calgary yesterday. These incidents are happening across the country, and it seems to me many factors may be involved in people cycling into violence with their mental health issues and their inability to resolve conflicts. It may be complicated, but I think we ought to be concerned that drug use is contributing to these things.
From your experience, can you comment further on the contribution of marijuana leading to psychosis and other mental health issues?
9:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Smart Approaches to Marijuana
Yes, thank you for the question.
It's an unfortunate side effect that we've seen. The research burst in the mid-1980s after looking at tens of thousands of Swedish conscripts and a very tight study that I cite here. It's one of the most widely cited studies in the marijuana literature, which looked at and found a significant connection of marijuana with mental illness.
The issues that have evolved are, often there's a discussion as to did marijuana cause mental illness or did the mental illness for various reasons precipitate marijuana use for “self-medication”? Self-medication is a lay term. It's not a term used in medical circles but we understand what it means: it's essentially relieving symptoms. The question has been in which direction has it gone? I would say the evidence is in both directions. There's strong evidence that marijuana precipitates mental illness, and strong evidence that mental illness may precipitate marijuana use. That's not as relevant to me as the fact that whatever direction it's coming from, the marijuana use seems to be exacerbating mental illness. I think researchers are having a side debate as to whether it causes it or is connected or comes after,
The issues for policy-makers and for all of you is the fact that we know that today's cannabis is exacerbating what's happening. In the U.S. alone, we have over 400,000 incidents of emergency room mentions for psychosis, panic attacks, psychotic episodes is what we would call them. I think this is something that very few members of the Canadian and American public even know could exist because again, the baby boomer generation, the generation born in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the parents and grandparents today, had a very different experience with cannabis than kids do today. They didn't have super-strength cannabis. They didn't have B.C. Bud, Quebec Gold, and now they're having it. I think that connection is very strong, and it's something that worries a lot of people.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
James Lunney Conservative Nanaimo—Alberni, BC
I just want to pick up briefly on the effect on the lungs. Obviously, smoking anything is not good for anybody. I, myself, am quite convinced of that. But bronchitis—cough, phlegm production—“itis” refers to inflammation. Inflammation is strongly associated with cancer development. I would think heavy users are going to be putting themselves at risk.
I want to take it away from cancer, because that will divert us. We need more evidence.
In terms of other organs, there's evidence, as I understand it, of decreasing male fertility. Can anybody comment on that? Is anybody aware of that?
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Smart Approaches to Marijuana
Sure. There is certainly evidence of that. There's evidence of head and neck cancers, as well. There's evidence of...reproductive and endocrine systems; there certainly are connections there that need to be further explored. Those have been identified for long over two decades now.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
James Lunney Conservative Nanaimo—Alberni, BC
The increase in crashes in Colorado: it obviously affects attention. There is compelling evidence. I'd like you to comment on that.
I'm also interested in your comment about the delivery mechanism making a difference, and the incident with the brownies. Can you expand a little bit on what happens when you ingest marijuana that way, going through the stomach as opposed to going through the lungs?
9:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Smart Approaches to Marijuana
You're taking in all the THC at once. A lot of these stores say that you should eat only eat a sixth at one time, wait a day, and then eat another sixth. I don't know if they just taste really good, or what, but people do not eat them a sixth at a time. They eat the whole thing usually at one sitting, as you would any other brownie.
The issue is that kids are also getting their hands on these. I don't think any of us could tell the difference between a regular chocolate chip cookie and a chocolate chip cookie that looks normal but it was baked with marijuana butter, which is usually the way they do it. We couldn't tell the difference, and these kids can't tell the difference.
Actually, according to the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center, after legalization and increased access from medical stores, we're seeing increases in kids getting their hands on these edible products and turning up in the ER. A member of our board, Dr. Chris Thurstone, who's a child psychiatrist and doctor in Colorado, is reporting on all of these. There have been dozens of incidents of kids under five going to the ER with cannabis poisoning, which is what they would call it. That would have been unheard of 10 years ago, but again, we're seeing this as it's become increasingly available.
I don't remember your first question.
9:50 a.m.
NDP
Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
I want to continue with the questions I was asking Dr. Smith earlier.
Thank you for the clarification. I thought you were talking about two different studies in your testimony. Now I understand.
In the second part of the study on young adults aged 18 to 21, you noted that 10 young adults were regular users of marijuana and 14 were not. Is that correct?
Were all of those 24 young adults exposed prenatally or neonatally to marijuana?
9:55 a.m.
Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
No. We were able to control for that, because we knew what their exposures were. We used statistical measures to control for that. There was actually an equal number of prenatally exposed in each group.
9:55 a.m.
NDP
Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
Interesting. Thank you for your clarification.
I have a question about the control group.
I am pleased to hear that the control group was made up of 14 young adults who were not regular users of marijuana. However, of those young adults, three of them reported consuming marijuana one to four times in the previous year.
Does the fact that those three young adults in the control group smoked marijuana for recreational or social purposes not skew the data?
9:55 a.m.
Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
Could you say that last part again?
9:55 a.m.
NDP
Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
Three of the fourteen young adults in the control group admitted that they had smoked marijuana one to four times in the previous year. Could that have skewed the data?
All of the studies today say that there are negative effects to smoking marijuana, even if it's only one to four times a year. These young adults didn't smoke every week, but they still smoked at least once every three months. Do you think that—
9:55 a.m.
Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
We did our analysis without those people in the analysis and found the same results.
The other thing is that those participants hadn't smoked anything in the last month, possibly two months, so we're pretty sure those are sound results.
9:55 a.m.
NDP
Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
If I understand correctly, these three young adults who consumed marijuana in the previous year still had results similar to those of the rest of the control group, correct?
