Thank you. I'll go to Mr. David.
Mr. David, we have very serious problems with addictions in Canada. We hear about them in this committee all the time.
Health issues related to alcohol cost billions in health care, unemployment, accidents, vehicular accidents, social service costs, and a lot of human misery. It's the same with marijuana. About 7% of marijuana users will become addicted. They suffer from memory loss, apathy, and a whole range of medical problems like psychosis and lung damage, and diabetes, as well as vehicular accidents and unemployment. Thousands of opioid addicts have died in Canada, and many more have had their lives ruined.
Addiction to nicotine diminishes lives as well. What I mean is that no matter what you're doing—you could be operating a crane with great weights over the city, or you could be a surgeon, a nurse doing critical work for others, a teacher, anyone—you have this nagging voice inside your head, like a bad angel on your shoulder saying throughout the whole day “come on, take a break, you'll feel better after a cigarette, it's not that bad for you”. Some people have it even at night.
Yet your product creates new addicts. Bear with me.
But you don't have the good angel. When people smoke cigarettes they have a good angel that says “this is bad for you, don't do it, you can stop”. Your good angel is telling you that you shouldn't smoke, that it's bad, that you might die early and that you might have lung disease. You guys have removed the good angel.
You have this marketing dream. People think it's good for them or it doesn't hurt them at all, so they can become addicted to nicotine. Your products do create new addicts. I'm not saying that's your goal, but they do. We've heard at this committee that they do. You have a marketer's dream. You can get people addicted to a new product.
But I think there should be a third option, especially for our young people: that we don't make anything that's addictive, that has unlimited, open, easy access, to create new addicts in our society. My question for you is, shouldn't e-cigarettes be sold only when the benefits exceed the risks, which would be for people who are already regular smokers? In other words, shouldn't they only be prescription...?