You also have to realize that patients use cannabis in many forms: there are oils, the dry product, as well as drugs approved by Health Canada. We think that medical cannabis should be maintained for those patients because they are not using it for the same reason as people who use cannabis recreationally. The government has said that it would maintain medical cannabis, according to the regulations, for five years and then evaluate how things are evolving. It is quite possible that, in the next five years, there could be more scientific evidence in support of certain treatments.
The reality is that patients are using it now. Our concern is that, once cannabis becomes legal, on October 17, they will not want to go to their doctor any more to get a medical prescription. We are afraid they will get their cannabis from the SAQ in Quebec, or other places in Ontario, for example, where those patients will not necessarily get the kind of clinical support that doctors and pharmacists can provide. Their use of the product will not be included in their medical profile. Establishing a different tax regime for each of these two groups will mean that patients will still be in a medical framework.