Thank you, Chair.
Thank you for being here today.
In movies and on television, marijuana is often a source of humour, and everybody gets the joke when somebody's—they do it with alcohol too—stoned or drunk, whatever. It's all done in great humour, etc., but what we don't hear about and what they don't put in movies, because it's not funny, are the long-term harms, or the short-term harms, that are caused by the use of marijuana.
Prescription drugs have to be proven safe before they can be sold, before they can be licensed and get a number to sell them in Canada, and that's for a very good reason. That's because they're inherently dangerous. They're powerful. They affect the body and they can cause harm. In fact, all prescription drugs can cause adverse effects, but marijuana has never been proven safe at a clinical standard, at least not that I've heard of, and if you've heard differently I'd like to hear that.
It's the only drug that I know of that is in fact allowed to be sold legally, prescribed by judges, because it's judges who have said, “You have to let people have it.” For the people who are using it, I don't know of any clinical evidence that it benefits them. There's lots of incidental evidence, but of course, the primary effect of marijuana is euphoria. People feel better. It makes you feel euphoric, so it's hard to do a clinical trial or provide clinical evidence that it's providing a medical benefit.
So what we're trying to do here is find what evidence there is of risks and harms, because it's hard for the users themselves to judge it, because they have good reason to take it. They're in pain or they're terminally ill and it makes them feel better. It's the only drug I know that's allowed to be used without evidence that it's safe. Shouldn't any drug that Canadians take be proven clinically safe before they're allowed to buy it and use it?