Health committee  Yes, of course they can. I think, though, the question is, what the therapeutic benefit of prescribing cannabis is versus its risks. If cannabis is prescribed, the risks of opiates and benzodiazepines are not going to go down. It's not an either-or thing. Opiates and benzodiazepi

Health committee  This is very relevant with respect to recommendations about driving. The current lower-risk cannabis-smoking guidelines that have been put out by Fischer and the Canadian Journal of Public Health suggest that people who use cannabis not drive for at least three to four hours afte

Health committee  Actually cannabis use is associated with an increased risk of death from suicide and from motor vehicle accidents, so it's not quite true that it has no associated mortality with it.

Health committee  I think Dr. Kalant is far more of an expert on that, specifically on its effects on youth.

Health committee  I would support what Dr. Kalant says. There is evidence from other countries that decriminalization actually does not increase use but actually helps to divert patients who have a problem to addiction treatment. In Portugal, for example, they decriminalized cannabis and it's had

Health committee  My understanding is that the increase has been quite dramatic since the eighties, not only in the number of people using, especially young people, but also in the potency of the THC, and therefore, the psychiatric and social harms of THC. It may have levelled off in the last few

Health committee  Sure. I can address that. This is not really true and it's not been validated in studies. The studies that have been done on smoked cannabis were very small, and they compared smoked cannabis to placebo. In the only trial we could find that compared smoked cannabis to an oral

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I am currently medical director of the substance use service at Women's College Hospital in Toronto, and an associate professor in the department of family medicine. I would like to acknowledge my colleagues Sheryl Spithoff,

Health committee  I'd like to see, similar to what Dr. Durnin said, that opiate substitution therapy—methadone and buprenorphine, as well as naloxone the important opiate overdose prevention tool—be available to all Canadians, including those in first nation communities and in remote communities t

Health committee  That's an excellent question. Purdue conducted focus groups with family doctors throughout the United States, and they found that the concern about addiction was a major barrier, so they tailored their advertisement and marketing towards that. They said controlled-release opia

Health committee  I personally think it would be better to have independent reviewers because there are so many hundreds of medications that it's impossible to believe that Health Canada could in itself have the internal staff to cover all these medications. In 2010 we actually complained to Hea

Health committee  The two most important things are, first of all, to ensure that the product monographs are objective and are not influenced by pharmaceutical marketing. The product monograph is listened to by physicians. It's in the CPS. Physicians are expected to adhere to it, and it is the bas

Health committee  Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present to this committee. I commend you on the important work you're doing. I am currently the medical director of the substance use service at Women’s College Hospital and an associate professor in the Department of Family and Communi