Health committee  No, it's just me.

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss the health risks of marijuana use. My name is Hilary Geller. I'm the assistant deputy minister of the healthy environments and consumer safety branch at Health Canada. My colleagues are responsib

Health committee  Thank you for your question. In terms of the specific harms to an individual and pills versus smoking marijuana, I'm afraid I'm not a physician and I don't feel qualified to answer that specific question. I guess what I will say is that there is a regime to make dried marijuana

Health committee  Thank you for the question. I think I just have to, I'm afraid, make a similar response to the first, which is that I'm not a physician. Those decisions are made between a patient and his or her physician, and the physician is in the best position to assess other alternative tre

Health committee  I understand that you'll be hearing from the CCSA or representatives of it shortly. They no doubt will be able to give you a more detailed response to your question. I think what you'll be hearing from the experts is that there is an emerging field of evidence about the specific

Health committee  I would respectfully suggest that this would be a question that the scientific experts would best be able to answer. What I can tell you is that the research shows that the earlier you start marijuana use, the riskier it is. Certainly at the round table yesterday with the ministe

Health committee  Thank you for the question. It is true that when it comes to dried marijuana, the regime that exists is as a result of various court decisions over the years, and it is true that dried marijuana has not gone through the clinical trials, etc., and the rigorous process that is req

Health committee  Thank you very much. In general, the health risks to young people have to do with their developing brains. It's a combination of the fact that it can—through a complex interaction, which the scientists will be able to explain to you much more specifically—have long-term lasting

Health committee  That is true. I have heard the scientists say that. I understand that it's—as many of these things are—a complex interaction between genetic predisposition, age of onset, frequency of use—

Health committee  The scientists, I think, will tell you that it's true. Yes, there has to be some genetic predisposition.

Health committee  Thank you. I'll just start with the second first, if I might. It's just simply to say that marijuana is regulated in Canada. It's regulated under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It meets the scheduling criteria to be made illegal, with the exception of the medical marij

Health committee  I would just simply say that we look at marijuana the same way as we look at other substances that can have harms. We have scheduling criteria that we examine the substance against, which include things like evidence of abuse, addiction liability, risks to personal and public hea

Health committee  This is relatively new information on the admissions that we received from CIHI. As I understand it, marijuana is a factor that has been brought to the attention of the physician when they're admitted to the hospital. So it's not necessarily the reason that they're admitted, but

Health committee  Yes, we can provide that.

Health committee  There were indeed some interesting statistics that the experts provided yesterday at the ministerial round table on impairment. If the committee doesn't get enough information from the experts, we'll be happy to follow up and provide it. But there were some alarming statistics ab