Evidence of meeting #25 for Health in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was study.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
Could you tell the room how you corrected this impact on the statistical analysis?
Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
Do you mean something like a Bonferroni correction?
NDP
Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
Okay, let's not get technical. When we talk about scientific studies, we can get into a lot of details and technical stuff and that is, perhaps, not the best way to discuss more on the broader topic.
Also, when I look at table 3—I don't know if you still remember—the margin of error seems kind of big. Can you comment on the margin of error? Sorry for getting all technical.
NDP
Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
Yes, the performance data. The margin of error seems kind of big. Do you agree?
NDP
Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
Just give me your feeling about the margins of error and how comfortable you are with them.
Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
I think that the actual p-values speak for themselves. They're not even close to being significantly different, so I think it's reasonable.
NDP
Dany Morin NDP Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC
Thank you very much for your input. I did read your study, so I had a lot of questions. When can we have the luxury of asking one of the scientists to comment?
Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
There is another study also—the one on the visuospatial working memory task. I don't know if you've read that as well.
NDP
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Ben Lobb
You're right on five minutes again.
Mr. Aspin, sir. Welcome back to the committee. You have five minutes as well.
Conservative
Jay Aspin Conservative Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
Thanks, Chair.
Welcome, guests. Thank you for your contributions.
First off, I'd like to ask Dr. Smith if her study was peer reviewed and whether it was published in a journal.
Conservative
Jay Aspin Conservative Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
Okay.
I'm just curious.
Dr. Sabet, your SAM study, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, was very intriguing to me, and it taught me a lot about the seven great myths about marijuana.
I have a broad question, and I don't want to put you on the spot. These kinds of phenomena usually happen in the States before they come to Canada. I'd just like to ask, in the case of Colorado and Washington, what happened. Did they not get the memo, or why do you see the advances in those particular states as far as what's happened goes?
Executive Director, Smart Approaches to Marijuana
That's a great question.
Really, it goes back to this issue of the divide between public misunderstanding and scientific understanding. When we look at every single medical association in North America that has examined this issue, the Canadian Medical Association, the American Medical Association, the Canadian pediatrics, the American pediatrics, on and on, they would be coming to the same conclusions that Dr. Smith and others have come to about the impact of marijuana on young people as well as greater society.
Unfortunately, the Canadian people and the American people are not getting the memo. They're not getting the memo because they are just filled with so many mixed messages—also from parents. Again, parents need to be taught that the marijuana they smoked in the dorms 30 years ago for a year is very different from the marijuana smoked today by young people for a longer amount of time. I also think mixed messages from various well-known figures can also contribute to that, which is really unfortunate because it sends a message that these are okay.
We also have to remember—and this may be uniquely American—the role of money in politics. For the last 25 to 30 years, over $150 million has been spent by businesses, corporations, and other philanthropists who really stand to gain if marijuana is legalized. The last slide I included, which I didn't talk about but I would urge everyone to read, is the Saturday interview in The Wall Street Journal in mid-March. The interview was with a person who wants to be the Philip Morris of pot. He wants to be the billionaire of marijuana, cannabis. When those kinds of interests start getting into play and they start influencing, gathering signatures, and a media campaign and messaging to say that we need to legalize and regulate marijuana, which is the word they use—they don't use the word “legalize”; they say “regulate”—that can really sway public opinion.
In Washington and Colorado, $3 million to $4 million was spent on those campaigns versus almost nothing in opposition. I think it was literally nothing in Washington and something like $500,000 scraped together by preventionists and law enforcement on the anti side. It is not surprising that when you have a $100 million megaphone, you can get messages out there. That's politics 101, and that seems to be what's happening.
There's a promise of new schools. There's a promise of funding. There's a promise of government revenue, and of course, those promises of revenue are futile because already they are collecting way less money than they had projected in the first couple of months in Colorado. As with other similar promises with lottery systems or with alcohol, really the taxes are not paying for the social damage, but it's a great messaging point to say that the taxes will pay for this. I think that was a big swaying point for a lot of people when they voted for this.
Conservative
Jay Aspin Conservative Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
I have a quick question for Mr. Perron.
With the targeting of youth and youth receiving mixed messages, and they are indifferent with respect to the harms, what particular programs or initiatives could be effective in altering the perceptions of youth with regard to the harms associated with cannabis use?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse
One is the type of program.
There have been a variety of provincial programs in play across the country for many years, some of which have been very good. Some have been not so good. As a result, our organization, along with a number of partners, developed the national standards for youth drug prevention program so that if you're in Nanaimo or in Estevan and you want a prevention program in your school, the standards will guide you as to what is good evidence-based prevention. We know prevention works, just not any kind.
The standards, first and foremost, are the bedrock against which the investments in this area should be applied. Second, in terms of the kind of messaging for cannabis, that's the messaging we would be bringing forward. I think a concerted effort around cannabis is required—it's overdue—with a particular focus not so much on trying to convince anybody of one position over another; it is about simply providing the facts as we have come to learn as to what is the impact of the use, whether it be acute.... In other words: “I smoke a joint tonight. I'm 16 and I'm a naive new driver. What are the consequences?”
Dr. Porath-Waller can speak to you very clearly as to the impact on fatally injured drivers and road crashes. This is a road safety issue.
Two, longer term, as Dr. Smith has indicated, there is providing straightforward facts for both short-term and long-term effects. It is also to bring into play the broader notion of society, which is moving away from this for-or-against issue on cannabis to what it is we wish for our youth, which everybody subscribes to as being the future of this country, and how we equip them to be best at what they do.
That sometimes gets a little bit murky when we start talking about criminalization issues and the like, but in terms of its impact on health and on the brain, that's indisputable, I would offer.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Ben Lobb
Just before I turn it over to Mr. Young, I have a brief question. Then it will be Ms. Fry after Mr. Young.
This question is for Dr. Sabet.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that each year in the United States, it's costing the health care system $156 billion, and $156 billion in loss of productivity. What are the estimations in the United States, moving forward, for the cost of marijuana and cannabis and loss of productivity for this? Is this something that you have numbers for, that you're working on, or what is out there?
Executive Director, Smart Approaches to Marijuana
It's very difficult to get those numbers. I think there are studies that are starting. I wouldn't say that they have concluded about what the actual costs alone of, say, a change in cannabis policy is. It depends on a lot of things.
For example, we haven't discussed today, how will cannabis use changes in young people affect alcohol use changes? We know that among young people—heavy users, arrestees, those in treatment—alcohol and marijuana are used concurrently; they are complements. If cannabis use increases because of a certain policy, then what that does to alcohol use, because of the great monetary damage that alcohol has, will greatly affect that overall number. So there's tremendous uncertainty.
We do know there are costs. We can at least lay out the categories that we would look at. You just laid out two of them. Productivity, I would say, is a key one, especially with regard to cannabis, and motivation, which we haven't really talked about today. Health care costs are going to be higher. We have to also look at what Mr. Perron said on road safety and public safety costs. Those numbers haven't really been done; those studies have not been done on the raw numbers...only looking at the categories that they would actually affect.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
Dr. Sabet, your presentation says that even casual users of marijuana have structural changes to their brain. Could that happen to someone who had smoked marijuana five or six times?
Executive Director, Smart Approaches to Marijuana
I think for some of those study participants in that human study that both Dr. Smith and I refer to, that was the case, but there were also people who smoked more than that, who were classified as casual because they were not at the heavy use level.
Executive Director, Smart Approaches to Marijuana
I don't know what the risk is, off the top of my head, but the animal studies that have been done before have certainly shown casual use changes, and this is the first human study, so it's definitely an area that we're looking at. Remember, on casual use, as Mr. Perron said, if you are using cannabis for the first time at 16, and you're a naive user, and you're getting behind the wheel of a car, or you're eating an edible...or vaporizing something, and you're hanging out on a balcony, whether or not that produces a brain change, which comes up in a month or two, really doesn't mean anything if you crash your car or fall off the balcony as a result of that—