Health committee  I'm unfortunately affected by hepatitis C, which I got in 1982 through the tainted blood system here in Ontario. I can tell you that one of the main reasons for hospitalization associated with liver disease is actually the overuse of Tylenol. You don't need to just look at prescription drug use to find problems with our current use of pharmaceuticals.

Health committee  No. As I've stated, the evidence suggests that people of higher education and higher rank tend to use cannabis as well. Unfortunately, our drug war focuses on 15-year-old to 25-year-old males. They're the majority target of our current enforcement policies. When I've done studies of medical cannabis users at medical cannabis dispensaries, we tend to find that the average user is above 40 years old.

Health committee  Not at all.

Health committee  I'm saying those are the facts according to all polling—

Health committee  It's not a ludicrous connection at all.

Health committee  —polling of Canadians shows that those who use cannabis have higher income and higher education levels than non-cannabis users.

Health committee  Yes. There is a study in the U.S. that shows a decrease in suicides in states with medical marijuana. They assume it's because of less suffering and the suffering that's relieved by it. You also mentioned higher income and academic achievement. In Canadian polling of medical cannabis users, Canadians who use marijuana have higher income levels and higher education levels than those who don't use cannabis.

Health committee  You don't need to believe it, but those are the stats. Those are the facts. It's not a belief system; it's a fact.

Health committee  Those are the facts.

Health committee  The fact is that—

Health committee  It's the Canadian addiction survey. I welcome you all to please look it up.

Health committee  That's right. We were talking—

Health committee  But cannabis does not. In fact, quite the opposite—

Health committee  No one has, and the biggest research project looking at the link between cancer and upper-respiratory-airway cancer and cannabis was done by a researcher named Donald Tashkin. It was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the U.S., and it found not only no link between cannabis use and upper-respiratory or lung cancer, but also that those who used cannabis moderately had a lesser chance of having upper-respiratory lung cancer than non-cannabis users, which is quite remarkable.

Health committee  No, I'm not familiar with any study of that, and I would question whether they found cannabinoids in their system, which means they might have used cannabis in the last 30 days—it's one of the most detectable drugs in our system—or whether they were high on cannabis. Clearly the most criminogenic drug of all that we use in North America is alcohol.