Evidence of meeting #65 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cannabis.
A video is available from Parliament.
2:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Thank you very much.
Now we'll open the floor for questions. We started off with a round—
Mr. St-Maurice.
2:25 p.m.
Regional Director, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
I did ask my colleague to present first, but I did not want to forgo my presentation.
2:25 p.m.
Liberal
2:25 p.m.
Regional Director, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
It's very brief. It will only be three minutes.
2:25 p.m.
Regional Director, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee.
My name is Marc-Boris St-Maurice. I was the executive director of NORML Canada. I am also the founder of Bloc Pot, a provincial political party from Quebec that is in favour of the legalization of marijuana, and the Marijuana Party, at the federal level. I'm also running the Centre de compassion de Montréal, a cannabis dispensary. In addition, I'm a member of the Liberal Party, but that will not stop me from criticizing your bill, rest assured. I have been fighting for the legalization of marijuana for 25 years. I apologize if my remarks seem shocking to you, but it's not personal. It is my duty to criticize the bill.
First of all, it is important to recall that we are here today because activists like us took to the streets to claim their rights, fought to promote them, and were arrested. Since we are the ones who have been the most affected and concerned and we are the victims of the prohibition, you must attach significant weight to our comments. I don't want to make assumptions about your government's intentions. However, as a result of my experience in the past 25 years, I have a lot of fears about the way the government is planning to legalize cannabis.
Since I was persecuted, criminalized, incarcerated and alienated, you will forgive my mistrust. I feel directly targeted when we talk about eliminating the criminal element from the market. I am one of those criminals. Like many other Canadians, I have a criminal record that has only cannabis-related offences, nothing else. That is why I became an activist. I feel threatened when I hear that they want to remove me from the market. And when I feel threatened, I get ready to defend myself. Instead, we should be talking about how to reach out to, integrate and legitimize people like me. We should be legitimized in some way. I keep reassuring myself by saying that if the prohibition has not managed to get rid of me, legalization certainly will not.
You should draw inspiration from Oakland, California, where they allow people with cannabis-related criminal records to be the first ones to apply for a permit for the distribution or production of cannabis.
It's truth and reconciliation, the Oakland, California, cannabis reparation.
Over there, they recognize the harm caused to consumers by the authorities, they apologize and try to make amends. That's the first step toward reconciliation.
We are not organized crime either. Cannabis is more like disorganized crime. We need to create a diverse and inclusive market. What matters most to me is the right of entrepreneurs who have had experience with cannabis to be able to be involved and participate in this new industry.
The heterosexual community is not asked to manage all the shops in the gay village. The Catholic Church is not asked to manage the distribution of kosher or halal products, nor is a vegetarian asked to look after Canada's butchers association. So why put the cannabis market into the hands of people who know nothing about it?
We, the users, producers, suppliers and advocates, have created an industry and have unparalleled expertise in the matter. The loss of this expertise and knowledge would be a disaster for the new marijuana industry. The current market is so well-established and integrated that it will definitely have a role to play in the evolution of cannabis distribution. We will never be able to accept being excluded from this new industry for which we have been fighting for more than 25 years. That would be another injustice and an insult to all those who have paid the price of the fight against prohibition.
A number of producer categories will be created to allow all sorts of models to coexist in a dynamic market, which must include the people from my community. There seems to be a sort of shame, systemic guilt trip related to the pleasure that people may feel from using cannabis. Why is there shame around pot, but not alcohol? We celebrate our microbrewers and grape growers as great artisans. Fine wines, vintages and grape varieties are rightly considered fine art. We merrily toast to celebrate weddings, anniversaries and all other occasions. Yet cannabis smokers have to hide in the alley to enjoy their guilty little pleasure. Why? Most use cannabis recreationally to unwind and relax, which poses no major problems.
I'm afraid that the problem with the legalization as proposed is that we are trying to get around this cannabis-related shame with a legal model that will give the illusion of good social conscience. So we must keep in mind the majority for whom consumption poses little or no problem. Attempting to find a system that will solve the small number of problematic cases is absolutely futile.
In closing, if 100 years of prohibition have not stopped us, poorly implemented legalization certainly will not.
On that note, with all due respect, I appreciate the invitation and I am open to any questions you may have to help develop a proposal that will be fair to all Canadians.
Thank you.
2:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Thank you very much.
Now we're going to start our seven-minute question period with Ms. Sidhu.
September 12th, 2017 / 2:30 p.m.
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for giving that valued information. I appreciate it.
My question is for Mr. Garza of the Colorado department.
My riding in Peel region is similar to many other communities across Canada when it comes to youths' use of marijuana. A Peel health report by the region of Peel in 2015 said that first-time users of marijuana increased from 5% to 11% over a two-year period. The same report said that 44% of Peel students felt it was very easy to access cannabis.
We need to take action to reduce youth use, as the present model is not working. Given your experience of cannabis legalization in Colorado and Washington, do you feel that Bill C-45 is a reasonable place to start with cannabis legalization in Canada?
2:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Colorado Department of Revenue
Mr. Garza, do you want to take that or do you want me to start?
2:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Colorado Department of Revenue
Okay, perfect. Thank you.
I don't necessarily want to speak to whether I think the place that you're starting from is the right place. I am happy to address any questions regarding our experiences in our district and the results of our regulations. Youth use is something that is very, very top of mind to us and something that we focus on very extensively.
One area where I think your proposed bill has an opportunity for improvement is that in the state of Colorado, we have appropriated $12 million to go to youth outreach and youth education over a period of time. I believe we have approximately five million residents who live in the state, and my understanding is that Canada is substantially larger than that. In looking at the materials yesterday on the plane coming out here, I believe you have $9 million earmarked for your entire country. That's one area of opportunity for improvement that I would point to.
Regarding our experience, as Mr. Garza mentioned, in the regulated marketplace we are very much focused on enforcement. We have underage checks, where we send our police officers, who are either associated with the marijuana enforcement division, or in conjunction with local law enforcement, to try to purchase marijuana under the age of compliance, which is 21 in the state of Colorado.
Our statistics are very similar to what Mr. Garza expressed for the State of Washington. I believe our compliance rate is 92%. I believe he said 93%, and then in recent months that it was 98%. Those are admirable numbers, and certainly I hope we have an opportunity to achieve those as well.
Where I would say we could do a better job on our end, candidly, is that on a historical basis, we haven't done enough of those checks. I believe that over the last four years, we've done something along the lines of 600 in total. Over the last two years, that's been 350 of those 600. We have started to accelerate those. We do anticipate doing more of them.
I think having strong regulatory enforcement tactics in place to address that portion of the marketplace is very, very important, in addition to the public education complement.
2:35 p.m.
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Okay.
Mr. Hartman, could you speak to the experience in Colorado of maintaining the medical supply after legalization for recreational use?
2:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Colorado Department of Revenue
Unfortunately, I can't. The medical side is not in my purview. We do the recreational side, and we also license those who are involved in the medical side, but I can't speak to that experience.
Mr. Garza probably would be able to speak to it better than I could.
2:35 p.m.
Director, Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board
I can speak to the youth access piece of the first question.
One of the things that we have at our schools for eighth, tenth and twelfth-graders is called a Healthy Youth Survey. It was something we were looking at after legalization. There's an obvious question in the survey that asks whether you have used in the last 30 days, and the most interesting thing that came back this last year was that there was no increase in that number. I think we expected that with legalization. I think one of the concerns was that the perception of harm had gone down and that it could be related to legalization, a belief that it's not as risky as it was. We had expected to see youth use up, especially amongst tenth-graders and eighth-graders in the survey, and in some counties we saw a decline.
One of the most obvious things is that cannabis has been around Washington among our youth and our adults for many, many years. In some instances—because I have teenagers—it was easier before legalization to get marijuana than it was to get alcohol, because it was black market or grey market medical.
It's still early, but we were pleased that we didn't see from the Healthy Youth Survey an increase in use among youth in the eighth and tenth grades .
2:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Colorado Department of Revenue
If I can clarify the record, I said that we do not regulate the medical space. I apologize. That is completely wrong. I conflated that with the caregiver space, the home grow space.
In regard to our experience, we have seen that the medical space has remained more robust than I would have anticipated as a private citizen. That's not necessarily the voice of our state saying that. However, that marketplace continues to exist. One area I may point to as to why that is the case is that we have a substantial differentiation in our tax scheme as it relates to medical use versus recreational use. Medical use is at a tax rate of 2.9%, and our recreational portion of the marketplace is at 15%.
2:40 p.m.
Professor of Marijuana Law and Policy, University of Denver, As an Individual
May I speak to your second question with regard to the medical availability?
2:40 p.m.
Professor of Marijuana Law and Policy, University of Denver, As an Individual
I think both Colorado and Washington state—and Mr. Garza will correct me if I am wrong—have had a tension between the recreational and medical markets in the way that Mr. Hartman just spoke of. In Colorado there's a tax differential. You can also purchase more from a medical store; you can purchase up to two ounces at a time, and I think also significantly and problematically, you can obtain a medical recommendation and purchase medical marijuana at 18, while for recreational use it's 21.
I think as long as you have these two regulatory regimes operating in parallel, where it's more advantageous to buy in one than the other, there are going to be tensions between the two.
We've seen that, particularly in Colorado with regard to caregivers, who as Mr. Hartman mentioned are people outside the regulated market who can grow for themselves or for others, and you had instances where they were growing possibly hundreds of plants in a single location. Police would show up and they wouldn't know whether that was a wholly illegal grow or whether it was a legitimate medical grow, or whether it was somewhere in-between. Law enforcement was confused and frustrated by that tension, by that inability to know whether this was legitimate. I think that one of the real tensions in any system with both is leakage from one to the other.
2:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Colorado Department of Revenue
I was also going to say that one important and critical piece that Mr. Kamin just touched on is that in Colorado we used to be able to grow, on the caregiver market, significant numbers of plants—in the hundreds—depending upon how many patients that a caregiver was growing for.
In the last legislative session we recently reduced the number of plants that can be grown in any home environment, regardless of the number of patients that are addressed, down to 12. I believe that's consistent with the number in your proposed bill of four. I think that will go a long way to help address the diversionary tactics that were in place previously, and I know that Mr. Garza spoke to the fact that they don't allow home grows for personal use in Washington state as well, for that same reason.