Yes, thank you for the question.
It's an unfortunate side effect that we've seen. The research burst in the mid-1980s after looking at tens of thousands of Swedish conscripts and a very tight study that I cite here. It's one of the most widely cited studies in the marijuana literature, which looked at and found a significant connection of marijuana with mental illness.
The issues that have evolved are, often there's a discussion as to did marijuana cause mental illness or did the mental illness for various reasons precipitate marijuana use for “self-medication”? Self-medication is a lay term. It's not a term used in medical circles but we understand what it means: it's essentially relieving symptoms. The question has been in which direction has it gone? I would say the evidence is in both directions. There's strong evidence that marijuana precipitates mental illness, and strong evidence that mental illness may precipitate marijuana use. That's not as relevant to me as the fact that whatever direction it's coming from, the marijuana use seems to be exacerbating mental illness. I think researchers are having a side debate as to whether it causes it or is connected or comes after,
The issues for policy-makers and for all of you is the fact that we know that today's cannabis is exacerbating what's happening. In the U.S. alone, we have over 400,000 incidents of emergency room mentions for psychosis, panic attacks, psychotic episodes is what we would call them. I think this is something that very few members of the Canadian and American public even know could exist because again, the baby boomer generation, the generation born in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the parents and grandparents today, had a very different experience with cannabis than kids do today. They didn't have super-strength cannabis. They didn't have B.C. Bud, Quebec Gold, and now they're having it. I think that connection is very strong, and it's something that worries a lot of people.