Justice committee  Just a quick comment that in our laboratory we see that the self-reported effects are as Jeff describes. Typically about four hours or so after people smoke, the perception of high has declined and data are returning back to normal; heart rates are back to normal, and so on.

Justice committee  My perspective is that we should give the police as many good tools as we can to use these laws, and I would include oral fluid tests in that. It's true that they are a newer technology than breath tests that we've had for alcohol for many years, but they have been used in other

Justice committee  Well, a blood test is considered the gold standard. For a criminal charge or conviction, I think that's what's being considered. However, I think the oral fluid tests will facilitate detection of impaired drivers and make the lives of police officers a lot easier.

Justice committee  There are suggestions that this is the case. In our lab, we've looked at smoked cannabis, and we find that it goes into the blood very quickly. In five minutes after people smoke a cannabis cigarette, they achieve their peak blood THC levels. It declines relatively rapidly afte

Justice committee  For alcohol, what we typically see is the effects of the drug are most pronounced on the rising limb of the BAC curve, and then once the BAC peaks, the effects on the falling limb of the curve at the same BAC are somewhat less pronounced than we typically see in the rising limb o

Justice committee  I would agree with Dr. Brubacher that there is enough evidence for us to, at least initially, pick per se levels based on the international literature, based on laboratory research. I think we know from laboratory studies the effects of cannabis on basic physiological and psychol

Justice committee  Well, we do. Evidence from several sources goes into setting per se levels. That's evidence from basic laboratory studies of the impact of these drugs on skills, evidence from effects on driving performance or simulated driving performance, and then epidemiologic studies on the i

Justice committee  It's certainly something you could propose. I think it works for alcohol, and it works to the extent that it's enforced in a public fashion. Among other things it works because a large portion of the driving population may have been drinking, or might drink in the future if they

Justice committee  That's an excellent point. Are you referring to the changes that have been seen in Australia?

Justice committee  Are you suggesting they may not be due to mandatory breath testing?

Justice committee  Yes. It's very true that, when we look at the effects of a particular measure like mandatory breath testing, changes to legal limits, or RIDE programs, there are other things that need to happen. I've said that legal limits and per se laws are important to introduce, but we als

Justice committee  Thank you very much. My name is Robert Mann. I'm the senior scientist from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, or CAMH, as we call it. I'm a member of the epidemiology faculty at the University of Toronto. In Bill C-46 the Government of Canada is proposing to

Justice committee  I would like to comment on that. It makes sense to somehow or other provide incentives for individuals to get on the interlock system early and stay on the interlock system through legislation, perhaps working through insurance and so on. I think one of the barriers, for example,

Justice committee  I think you need to keep in mind in all of this that your actual chance right now of being apprehended if you're driving while impaired is quite low. That applies whether you're a first-time, second-time, third-time, or fourteenth-time offender. So that may have something to do w

Justice committee  We looked at studies from Australia and Europe that examined what happened when legal limits were lowered to 0.05 in Australia and in European countries. The studies were looking at collision fatality rates and using econometric analyses that controlled for things like alcohol co