Sure. Thank you, and I want to congratulate you on your private member's bill, on your personal recovery, and on your advocacy of that in supporting those who are working so hard to live drug free.
Obviously, as health minister, I'm very concerned about the impacts of marijuana smoking on kids in Canada, and you know, from the committee study that you did, the severe health impacts. Marijuana is an illegal drug for a reason. It's illegal because it's very harmful and it does have serious health effects on youth. This committee heard that loud and clear, and when I had an opportunity to bring together health stakeholders from the mental health and addictions field, they talked about their concerns around the proliferation of marijuana and how many young people were exposed to it who didn't know enough about how this could harm them. I asked, “What is the one thing I could do to help you in the work that you do?” They said, “We want a smoking cessation campaign, a national campaign.”
What we committed to doing was an ad campaign so that we could get to parents and kids, get that information to them. That's what we did, and we targeted the issue of marijuana and prescription drug abuse. It was very effective because a lot of parents said, “You're kidding. I didn't know that this stuff that's out on the streets is something like 500 times stronger than it was when I was a kid”, and there are all of these health impacts, whether it's the early onset of psychosis or schizophrenia, obviously decreased IQ, and many of the things that you heard from the committee study.
We know that especially in youth the evidence is irrefutable, so we have to get that information out there. I would quote the current Canadian Medical Association president who said, “Any effort to highlight the dangers, harm and potential side effects of consuming marijuana is welcome”.
We'll continue to do that.
What do I think of Mr. Trudeau's idea of legalizing marijuana? I don't like it. I've seen what's happening in Vancouver where pot dispensaries are selling pot to kids, well, to a 15-year-old the other day who ended up very sick and overdosed. I think making a harmful drug more accessible and normalizing it by selling it in storefronts is a very bad idea. I don't know how, as health minister, I could think in any other way. This has a serious health impact on young people. I think parents need to educate themselves and think very clearly about what kind of city they want to live in, and make that known to those who are making these decisions. I think it's irresponsible.
We clearly have heard from communities and parents across Canada that home grow ops pose a public health issue, but more so a public safety issue, so we have fought to shut those down. We've passed regulations to shut down home grow ops. Of course, we're now fighting the courts because the courts have put an injunction in place, and we'll continue to fight that in court. We don't think home grow ops are a good idea. We've heard from the police, from the firefighters, and from parents in neighbourhoods that they don't want marijuana grow ops in their neighbourhoods, and we'll continue to fight that fight.
We know that a UNICEF report a few years ago said that Canadian youth were the number one users of marijuana in the world per capita, and that was very concerning. We have really made an effort in schools and in other ways to reach out to young people in our ad campaign. I was very pleased about a recent report that, according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, there is a decrease, from what I understand, in the number of kids using marijuana, so that's a good thing. The strategy is working. This idea that, if we make it legal, somehow kids will use less, makes absolutely no sense to me. I think we have to keep warning kids about the dangers of it and parents as well so that they have that conversation with their kids and keep it away from them.