Health committee  I'll be very brief. I would agree completely. Also, I would point out that the hope that legalizing would eliminate the black market would be true only if it were sold legally at a lower price than the black market. If you do that, the use is likely to increase greatly. As long

Health committee  Unfortunately, that question isn't possible to answer without qualification, because when you say “dangerous”, are you talking about acute danger? Are you talking about fatality? Are you talking about serious impairment of function in the immediate period of action of the drug, o

Health committee  In the long term, I would say that alcohol and cannabis are probably quite similar.

Health committee  Oh, prescribed drugs.... Well, obviously opiates are dangerous both acutely and in the long term, acutely because it is possible to cause death by an overdose by suppressing respiration, and chronically, because addiction is well known with opioids and has important effects not o

Health committee  Well, it depends on what drugs you're talking about, of course. If you're talking about cardiovascular drugs, renal drugs, or gastrointestinal drugs, I'm not sure you can demonstrate that they would have much effect on function. But if you're talking about nervous system drugs, y

Health committee  If you're talking about smoking, the onset of action is almost immediate. The concentration in blood rises rapidly for about the first 10 to 15 minutes. Then it levels off while the concentration in the tissues continues to increase, because the solubility of THC in fatty materia

Health committee  I want to make clear that what I said was that no deaths have been proven from overdose alone.

Health committee  Thank you. That did constitute a large part of the preliminary remarks that I read, and I would simply repeat that, acutely, there is temporary impairment of function, as there is with many drugs affecting the central nervous system. Alcohol, tranquilizers, and opiates all affec

Health committee  The cannabis that was available for illicit purchase at the time of the Le Dain commission was in the order of 0.5% to 1% THC. That was the material that was supplied to us from seized material by the RCMP when we began our studies. The current average for seizure material is b

Health committee  Well, certainly I agree with the view that giving criminal records—especially to young people whose lives are all ahead of them—for possession of small amounts for personal use is not a benefit to society. On the other hand, legalization is not the same thing as decriminalization

Health committee  Well, I would use alcohol as an example of how unsatisfactory regulation has been under a legal status. Young people use alcohol much more than one would like to see, yet it is a legal drug. It's simply the case that older people above the legal age for purchasing share it with t

Health committee  I would just like to add a very brief comment to what Dr. Kahan has said. The difference between smoking and oral use of cannabis or pure cannabinoids is that when you inhale the cannabis containing the THC it is absorbed into the blood and reaches the brain more rapidly than whe

Health committee  You raise a very good point. All the current uses that have been tested—not all have been approved—for which some evidence exists of a beneficial effect of cannabis, it is not the most effective, the most potent, or the most reliable drug. However, some patients don't respond eve

Health committee  It was since 1959.

Health committee  I would be happy to give the clerk follow-up information. I can say that, in general, certainly alcohol is much more widely used than cannabis, and not surprisingly, it also causes serious health problems, more than cannabis, because of its wider use. The question of why it's al