John, if you don't mind my going first, I'd love to jump in. I'll try to be quick.
I love the question, because sometimes we get caught up in the minutiae, like you say, and we forget to look at things from a broader perspective. The drug model, which came into force in all of the western world in the 1930s, basically captures everything used for a therapeutic purpose. Anything you ingest, either to prevent illness or to treat illness or injury, is a drug.
The drug model has captured the entire field. I could say to you: “You look dehydrated. Would you take some water to treat your dehydration?” I would have just broken a myriad of federal laws: I made water a drug. Literally, water is a drug, if we use it to treat dehydration.
The second part of the drug model is that we make it illegal. All drugs are illegal except that the government will grant temporary exemptions in the form of a licence, allowing us to access a drug. How did we end up in the legal philosophical situation where in Canada it is illegal to treat ourselves with anything or to prevent injury unless it's approved of by the government? That's very offensive from a legal philosophical perspective. I mean, we've been using ginger tea to treat nausea for 3,000 years, and now, all of a sudden, it is illegal and we need to seek Health Canada's permission.
I think that from a regulatory framework we always have to ask ourselves, how actually does this affect the rights of the citizen and is this justified? I mean, sometimes it will be, but we've basically lost sovereignty over our own bodies because there are whole treatment modalities that are illegal for us to access.