Mr. Speaker, in my estimation, and pardon the pun, this legislation seems to be sucking and blowing at the same time. We are at the point where the stated goal of the legislation is to keep marijuana out of the hands of children. The government has repeated that line over and over again.
My premise is that if something is illegal, that sends a signal to children that there is something wrong with that product and they probably should not be doing this. Speeding is illegal. We say people should not go over 100 kilometres per hour. People do, but it still is illegal. It indicates the norm, essentially.
We have a product that is dangerous to children's health. It has multiple complications. The medical community has said to step back and look at it, that when youth are consuming it, specifically under the age of 25, things happen that are not good. Psychosis and schizophrenia have been tied to marijuana use. There are mental health issues in general and addiction issues. All these things come into play.
Currently it is illegal, so when we tell our kids they should not smoke marijuana because they could suffer from paranoia or schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, we also say it is illegal. If those reasons do not convince them, maybe the fact that it is illegal will.
Now we are going to be legalizing it but working to keep it out of the hands of children. That is where I get the idea that we are sucking and blowing with this. We are saying one thing one moment and another thing the next moment. We are saying that we want to keep it out of the hands of children, but we are going to legalize it. In my world, those two things do not compute. If we want to keep it out of the hands of children, we should restrict it more, and maybe we have to work on some of the other things, like education.
That is my opening point.
I am going to harken back to some things I read in the past. I am going to refer to the work of C.S. Lewis. He talked extensively about a vast array of things, but one of the things he talked about was how we function as a society.
There are rules that are not necessarily laws in society. They are rules that allow us to operate cohesively as a society. He said there are three aspects we have to take into consideration when we operate in society. His gave the example of society as a fleet of ships travelling across the ocean. He said we have to look at all the rules in society as if we were a fleet of ships. First, we need to make sure that the things inside the ships work well. We have to make sure the engines are running, the rudders work properly, and the hulls are intact and have no holes so they do not sink. We have to make sure the navigation systems are working properly. All these things are very important.
He says that as a society, we have to ensure that the things inside of people work well as well. We have to make sure that their physical health is good, that their mental health is good, and that they are safe from the outside.
That comes to the second point he makes. He says we cannot have these ships crashing into each other. If we are going to make it to our destination, if we want to keep our ships without leaks and make sure our steering systems still work, we cannot have ships crashing into each. If we crash into each other, we could damage the steering system or the hull and cause a leak. Therefore, we have to make sure we have rules to keep systems in place that keep the ships from crashing into each other.
On the other hand, he said, that if they were a fleet of ships and they wandered apart from each other, there would be no point in their being a fleet anymore. They would just be one ship in the night essentially. He said that was as important as the other. There were two things they had to be very careful with: that they did not drift apart, but also that they did not crash into each other. That was tied in, again going back to the first level of where they had to ensure all the things inside the ships were working properly.
Finally, he said that they needed to ensure that all the ships in the convoy got to their destination. If these ships had left Bristol, going to New York and they ended up in Sydney, they would not have accomplished what they set out to do. The end goal, where the ships were going, was just as important as the navigational systems. If the navigational systems were not working, they probably were not going to make it to where they needed to go. Therefore, all three levels were very important: what happened inside of the ship, what happened between the ships, and that the ships made it to where they were trying to go.
When we deal with the issue of legalizing marijuana, all three of these levels come into play. In this debate, we typically only talk about the interplay between the ships. We say that if we use marijuana, there will not be any collisions between the ships so we will probably be okay. However, that does not take into account the idea that perhaps the ships will drift apart. We do not often consider that. However, individuals within a society drifting apart is just as dangerous and tragic as crashing into one other. We have to look at that as well.
The other thing we have to look at is what happens within the ships, within individuals. I have mentioned some of those things before.
For particular people who use marijuana, especially youth, the Canadian Medical Association has been strong on the fact that schizophrenia, bipolar, paranoia, and depression can come from marijuana use. Therefore, we might say that people must keep their ship in order, keep their navigation systems working properly, and keep their steering systems working properly, so they should not use marijuana. We might also say that marijuana can affect people's relationships with their parents, their spouse, and their children. Therefore, we want to ensure that their marijuana use takes that into consideration. As a society, we might tell them to be careful so they do not drift apart.
Finally, as a society, we want the best for the people. That is why we are having this very discussion. We are saying that we do not think children should be using marijuana because it is bad for them, that later on in their life they will regret their actions. Therefore, we should be discouraging marijuana use.
I have laid it out in those terms and that gives people the idea of why we are opposed to the sucking and blowing that is essentially happening here. We want to keep it out of the hands of children but we will legalize it.
I hope I have laid a picture, using C.S. Lewis' picture of morality and ships. It was a good picture, in this instance. We want to ensure we make it to New York, we make it to a fulfilled life. I am concerned about that.
We all know individuals who have struggled with marijuana use and it has had detrimental effects in their lives. When they were 15, they began smoking marijuana. Now they are in their 40s, they not only struggle with marijuana use, but also with where their life has gone. They feel life has passed them by.
This is an article about a 34-year-old gentleman from Toronto. His name is Mike Stroh. He said that he was part of a generation who grew up smoking current strains of marijuana, which had been genetically selected to produce a powerful high, with THC levels of about 20%. That was up from around 7% in the 1960s and 1970s. He said from the age of 13, he got high almost every day until he was 30. He was into sports and he wanted to do stuff at school, but he could not make it to practice, could not make it to tryouts because he was either up at night selling drugs or trying to get them, falling into a drug induced coma and then waking up in a mess.
I hope I can finish my remarks in questions and comments.
