Health Committee on Sept. 13th, 2017

[Amy Porath]

We do a great deal of work at the CCSA in collaboration with many partners. Some of those partners involve the federal government, different provincial governments, and municipalities. I can talk about some of our products today. We've collaborated with a partner in Ontario, Parent Action on Drugs, to develop an infographic based on a systematic review we did looking at the effects of cannabis use. I talked about the focus group research we've done.

We actually created a friendly infographic for parents that talked about the myths that youth have and what the evidence actually says to counter those myths. We recently collaborated with Marc Paris and Drug Free Kids in the talk kit that he shared with the members today. As he mentioned, there's a lot of uptake, a lot of parents using this, and it's really key that we get the evidence out.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

This is an excellent program.

Mr. Paris, did you receive any government funding to help with that?

[Marc Paris]

The only funding we got was for translation, printing, and distribution. The brochure itself, to be quite frank, was originally developed by our sister organization in the U.S. called Partnership for Drug-Free Kids. We were given the Canadian rights to it. We Canadianized it; we updated it; and we made sure it was all evidence-based, working with CCSA in particular going through all of the research. It was then vetted as well by Health Canada scientists. So this brochure has gone through many layers of review and is considered one of the best ones out there right now.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

For sure.

My last question has to do with the definition of youth in Bill C-45. Youth are defined as people aged 12 to 17. Then there are a number of provisions, but children under the age of 12 are not included. Where we talk about a trafficking offence to people 12 to 17, they are covered as young people. But there's nothing in there for people 11 and younger.

One amendment I was considering was about defining youth as persons under the age of 18. I'm looking to anyone here for their comments.

[Marc Paris]

That's an interesting point, because we've been focusing primarily on teens. When we do our campaigns on drug-impaired driving, particularly high driving, we extend that to about age 23. Really the driving age is from 17 to 23. But we know for a fact that experiments with cannabis start at a very early age. The average age is 15, but we've heard, anecdotally, about those 11, 12, and 13. Probably Dr. Barakett can confirm that.

It's an interesting point. If we're going to have cannabis in the house, is there not a way that we should make sure we protect every kid?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Your time is up, Ms. Gladu.

Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Porath, it strikes me that if one of the aims of this bill is to reduce use by young Canadians, we'll need to know why they're using it. Many people have pointed out that use by Canadian youth aged 15 to 24 is either the second highest in the world or among the highest. Why is that?

[Amy Porath]

It's a very good question, and it's a question that I get asked a lot.

In our focus group research, we heard from the young people some of the reasons why they're using drugs, cannabis in particular. A lot of young people talked about dealing with stress and with mental health issues. Really, they were using cannabis as a way of self-medicating to deal with some of the pressures from school and pressures that they're experiencing in their day-to-day life.

I don't know if that gets at your question of why Canadian youth are some of the highest users. I don't know if I have an answer to that. I just know that it's a startling statistic and one that we want to address.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I don't mean to put you on the spot. Maybe we don't know the answer.

I'm going to ask you the same question, Dr. Barakett, because I would imagine that youth in France, Germany, Mexico, and Uruguay also are suffering from stress, so I don't know if that's really the answer.

Dr. Barakett, do you have any idea why use among Canadians seems to be so high?

[Dr. William J. Barakett]

I think cannabis has gotten a free ride. The older generation seems to have made it a banal issue by saying “oh well, it's just pot”, but that generation that thinks back to it was smoking what was 4% and 6% pot, and that's not what the kids are getting their hands on today.

Also, the information has not been divulged to people in terms of the exact mechanisms of damage in the developing brain. That's where we need to really step up to bat. I remember giving a lecture on adolescent addiction to a group of doctors. They all sat there with their jaws dropped. One of them, who was in charge of an adolescent health clinic, said, “In Quebec we have normalized the use of cannabis by adolescents.” That's normal behaviour, “normalized”.... Sorry, but it's not.

We've done a poor job because of the lack of research. Look, research in medicine occurs because drug companies see something with a new medication to enrich their shareholders at the end of the line. Not enough money has been put into research to demonstrate what's going on.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

I don't want to belabour this point, but is that different from western Europe?

[Dr. William J. Barakett]

When you look at Holland, where it's sold in corner stores, you see that the number of youth who use is far lower than it is here. Perhaps they've had a more public discourse.

You would probably know more, Amy, because you study those sorts of things.

I don't really know it. I just know that for some reason people haven't twigged to the fact that we have a very high dropout rate from school. We have a high rate of addiction. How come we have this opioid epidemic of diverted prescription opioids? Who's taking them? Teenagers. Which teenagers? The ones who started with pot. I mean, it all fits when you're in that milieu day in and day out.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

We did a study on opioids. We found that in 2016 there were 19 million prescriptions written for opioids. That might have something to do with this. That's one prescription for opioids for every two Canadians in the country.

[Dr. William J. Barakett]

Yes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I want to move to education. It strikes me as common sense—and I think a lot of witnesses are saying this—that we should be starting the education yesterday, if not today. In fact, the task force recommended that the federal government “[t]ake a leadership role to ensure that capacity is developed among all levels of government prior to the start of the regulatory regime”. We don't have to wait until July 1, 2018, or thereafter.

You've heard that the federal government has announced $9 million for education. That's the amount of money that Colorado, with one-seventh our population, is spending on education this year. The State of Washington, which has one-fifth our population, is spending $7.5 million. I guess this is a pretty obvious question, but shouldn't we be ramping up the federal contribution on education now, in advance of the regulatory system coming into being?

[Marc Paris]

Just to specify, I think the $9.5 million was over five years, so it's not even $9.5 million a year. If you look at that, quite frankly, it's a drop in the ocean. For our campaigns that we do as a not-for-profit organization, with our 60-plus media partners who provide us with the time and space for free as public service announcements, we generate on our own $15 million a year in free public service time and space.

In the last six years that we've been in operation, $100 million of public service announcements have been aired on opioids, drug-impaired driving, and now cannabis. We have been on that forefront. We took the leadership with this thing because we followed the task force recommendations.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Yes. I appreciate that.

[Marc Paris]

We weren't waiting for anybody. We just go and do our stuff.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

I'm not sure who said that the government should allocate money from tax revenue for treatment and prevention.

Was it you, Ms. Porath? Could you quantify that for us?

[Marc Paris]

Just for example, right now, we're trying to work with a group in Quebec, La Maison Jean Lapointe, that has developed a very fine in-school program at junior high and senior high levels with teachers. It was funded by Health Canada and it is ready to go. They've been doing it for three years. The cost of doing these in-school programs is about $10 a head. They've been doing it with 160,000 Quebec students. There has been an extremely high level of recognition for the program. We would love to roll this out in English Canada. There are 1.5 million teenagers in the rest of Canada. At 10 bucks a pop, that's $15 million.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Let me ask you a quick question, getting back to the issue of stress. It would almost seem to me that we should be addressing the social determinants of this problem too. It strikes me that it means talking not just about cannabis but about the underlying problems they are facing. We're facing a generation that is very, very stressed out. Should we not then be researching and investing in how we can address those fundamental issues, in addition to the tertiary issue of cannabis use?

[Marc Paris]

I totally agree. You mentioned that as well. It's all about building resiliency in our kids so they don't become anxious over too many things. We know social media and everything else is causing another level of anxiety that maybe the previous generations didn't face, but at the end of the day, you kind of have to question the helicopter parenting approach. Have we developed a bunch of anxious young kids who, as soon as they have a problem, turn to drugs?

That's why we have to change that view to there being better ways to deal with these personal issues than by going to drugs, whether their parents are going through a divorce, or they're suffering from neglect or abuse, or they have self-identity issues. All of these things come into play, and the first solution can't be to take drugs. We have to change that dialogue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you very much. That's very good.

Now we will move to Dr. Eyolfson.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming.

I agree that this is a very, very good resource. I notice that it was also thanks to Health Canada. Apparently it also assisted in the support, collaboration, and distribution of that. I'm glad to see a lot of sectors helping to create this. Congratulations. This is very good work.

[Marc Paris]

Thank you.