Health Committee on Sept. 15th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We're bringing meeting number 68 of the Standing Committee on Health to order. We're studying Bill C-45, and our panel this morning will focus on edible products.

While I have a minute, I want to tell the committee—and I've been on a lot of committees—and yesterday was 12 hours straight. Nobody lost their focus, nobody lost their interest, everybody was paying attention, and I thought through this week that all members of the committee have done a really good job of asking the right questions and bringing the right issues up. I'm really pleased and proud to be part of this committee. I just wanted to say that this morning. I was thinking about it last night. In an awful lot of committees, people are not focused, and they lose interest at some point, but nobody has lost interest at all through this whole session, and it's been quite a marathon. I thank you all for doing that. It's been quite a week, and we're not done yet. We have edibles this morning.

To start our panel on edible products, we have three witnesses this morning. Dr. Ryan Vandrey by video conference from Maryland. He's an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. From the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, we have Dr. Daniel Vigil, manager of marijuana health monitoring and research. From Sensible BC, we have Mr. Dana Larsen, director.

We're going to ask each one of you to make a statement that's a maximum of 10 minutes long. Then when we're done the three opening statements, we'll ask questions for the next little while. We'll start with Dr. Vandrey to make a 10 minute introduction.

[Professor Ryan Vandrey, Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins University, As an Individual]

I probably don't have 10 minutes here, but I'll give you the brief version. I'm a human cannabinoid researcher at Johns Hopkins. I've been doing cannabis research for 17 years now. Recently I've been focused on evaluating the dose effects of cannabis, their different routes of administration, including oral or edible cannabis products. We look at the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamic effects of cannabis through this route of administration. We've also done some product testing research, in which we evaluate the label accuracy of edible products sold in dispensaries in the U.S.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

All right thank you very much. We appreciate that. Is that everything you want to say in your opening statement?

[Prof. Ryan Vandrey]

That's it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We'll have some questions for you; don't worry.

Now we'll go to Dr. Daniel Vigil, manager of marijuana health monitoring and research at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Thank you for being here.

[Dr. Daniel Vigil, Manager, Marijuana Health Monitoring and Research, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee. I also don't have an extensive opening statement. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have. I'll just say a few brief things.

Concerning edibles, as opposed to smokable forms of marijuana, we have recognized a few different concerns that we think are important to address in policy. One is accidental exposure, either by children or by individuals who aren't aware that the product in front of them may have THC in it. The second is over-consumption, primarily by naive users who aren't familiar with the delayed effects of edible products. Then there are various concerns of contamination with microbials, residual solvents, or pesticides that perhaps could be concentrated in edible products.

Concerning accidental exposure, packaging, and.... The product forms are very important to not to appeal to children. Childproof packaging is very important. Labelling is also important, both on the product and the package, to make people aware that it's not, for example, a standard candy bar, that there's something different about it. For various potential contamination, good laboratory regulations are very important. I have plenty of information about some of the data we've seen etc., and again, I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you very much.

These are the shortest opening statements we've ever had.

For Sensible BC, we move to Mr. Larsen.

[Dana Larsen, Director, Sensible BC]

Thank you very much. I'll take my full 10 minutes.

Thanks for having me at this committee. I've been a cannabis activist for all of my adult life. I run a cannabis dispensary, and I've probably sold more cannabis than all the other witnesses combined.

It's good to be here today, but I have my doubts that this committee will actually act upon the evidence being brought before them in the testimony they're hearing. I say that because I have been at this a long time. When I first got started as a cannabis activist in the 1990s, the government was introducing the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to replace the Narcotic Control Act. At that time, there was a great deal of testimony and hearings, and about two dozen groups came forward who said that prohibition was a failure, the war on drugs was a failure, we should legalize, end prohibition, and approach things differently. The only groups that supported that legislation were the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Canadian pharmaceutical association. Everyone else was against it.

The government said it would pass this law and have a drug policy review afterwards. That review never happened. Canada's Senate took it upon itself, and it issued a comprehensive and detailed report on cannabis in 2002, a five-volume report that probably remains one of the best analyses of cannabis and cannabis policy today. That report was also completely ignored. I encourage committee members to take a look at that Senate report from 2002 because it is an incredible document. It recommended legalization of cannabis for all Canadians over the age of 16. These were Conservative senators, not a bunch of pot smokers, and they recommended legalization for everyone over the age of 16. That was ignored.

The year I was born, 1971, the Le Dain commission recommended decriminalizing cannabis possession and cultivation and working toward legalization. That was also ignored. For all my life, I've seen our government listen to testimony, do research, have studies, talk to people, and then ignore the results. I hope that doesn't happen here today.

The cannabis act is a bad piece of legislation. It is flawed in a great many ways. It doesn't even decriminalize the joint that I have in my pocket now, which I'm going to smoke after this committee hearing. The idea that we're going to have licit and illicit cannabis and that we're going to have the police trying to decide which cannabis is good and which is not good is simply not going to work.

In cities like Vancouver, where it's already effectively decriminalized, we're not going to see much of a change in policy. In northern areas, first nations communities, or the poor people who are demonized and affected most by cannabis prohibition, you can bet police will be going after them and asking where they got their cannabis from, telling them that it's illicit cannabis and that they're going to charge them with possession. It is absurd at a time when we're talking about decriminalizing all drugs that we're still not even decriminalizing cannabis possession under this legislation.

I was asked to speak today about edibles, but to me that's a category that's too restrictive. We should be also discussing hashish, tinctures, capsules, extracts, creams, drops, suppositories, all the many ways you can use cannabis. At my dispensary, we sell buds and all these other products, and the buds we sell are less than half of everything we sell. When I hear that in Ontario they're saying that they're going to set up these legal shops right next to the dispensaries to put them out of business, I think that's great; it's not going to affect my clients at all. Ninety-five percent of my customers will continue to shop with me even if there's a legal shop next door. It's simply not going to have the range of products that are really available and necessary.

As an activist who wants to see better drug laws in Canada, I don't like this at all, but as a business owner, it's great. This is going to keep me and other dispensaries in business for many years to come. This will do nothing at all to shut down dispensaries or affect the black market.

We had a pretty major court case, the Owen Smith case, and Kirk Tousaw, who spoke yesterday, was the lead lawyer on that case. The courts ruled that medical patients have a right to access not only smokable buds but cannabis in all these other forms as extracts. Health Canada's response was to allow licensed producers to make cannabis extracts with no more than 3% THC, which is a complete disregard of both the letter and the spirit of that court decision. It's not surprising, because that has been the attitude of the government and Health Canada for years. Every time we get a court ruling against...to expand the cannabis access, the government and Health Canada take the most restrictive possible interpretation of that decision.

The result of this is that the government has lost control over cannabis, and it has lost control for many years now. We've been systematically dismantling Canada's cannabis laws for the last 20 years, beginning with the laws against bongs, vaporizers, and pipes, which are still on the books under section 462.2. That law has never been removed, and yet it would be hard to find a city that doesn't have multiple bong shops in it today. We did that in the 1990s by simply defying the law and opening up bong shops. There were raids and conflict, kind of like now with dispensaries. After time, police and communities realized that the war on bongs was a failure, that nobody wanted to see it happen, and they gave up. As a result, we have effectively legalized bongs and pipes, seed banks, vapour lounges, and we're on the way to doing it with dispensaries as well. In many cities, we already have.

We're not, then, going to follow these laws. With large aspects of this legislation you're creating laws that are simply unenforceable and you are giving the police a task impossible to do.

I'm currently facing charges for giving away cannabis seeds. I've given away more than seven million viable cannabis seeds over the last two years. I've travelled to 22 cities across Canada in the last two years giving away seeds.

I was charged in Calgary in 2016 for giving away cannabis seeds. They've set aside a three-day trial for me at the end of October—three days in court in our justice system. It is letting alleged murderers and rapists go because they don't have space in our courts, but they're going to make three days for me for a trial for giving away low-THC cannabis seeds to those who want them. I believe those charges will be dropped before they go to trial, because what a waste of time this would be, but the fact is, our courts cannot handle the massive civil disobedience campaign that Canadians have been launching. It's simply not going to succeed.

I would like to remind the committee that the origins of Canada's cannabis prohibition in our drug war is not some well-intentioned effort to protect public health or protect children or any of that. Our war on drugs, the war on opium and the war on cannabis, began as a racist and ignorant effort to eliminate Chinese people and other racial communities from Canada. That's how it started; there's no question about that. There's no time since 1908, when the Opium Act was passed, or since cannabis prohibition came in the twenties and today, when these laws changed from being racist and ignorant and bigoted to being somehow well-intentioned and good for our communities. These laws are bad in their origins and continue to be terrible today.

The fact is that the war on drugs is really a war on plants, and cannabis may just be the world's greatest plant. There's no other plant that has the nutritional, industrial, social, and medicinal value that cannabis has.

The other aspect of this war on drugs and the war on plants is the fact that coca leaf, opium poppy, psilocybin mushroom, and peyote cactus are all also good plants with thousands of years of social and cultural use. The war on drugs is really a war against these plants and against nature, and it's time that it comes to an end.

Do you want to know who is to blame for the fentanyl crisis that we're experiencing across Canada? It's you. It's our Parliament, which has passed these laws that prohibit reasonable access to opiates. The fentanyl crisis is entirely the fault of Canadian policy.

We don't have a drug problem in Canada; we have a prohibition problem in Canada. When we end prohibition we will see the vast majority of the problems we associate with drug use go away.

Cannabis, in fact, is not a problem. Cannabis is part of the solution. In Vancouver we now have two sites that are offering free or discounted cannabis medicines to opiate users as a substitution project. There's evidence out of the U.S. showing that American states that have access to dispensaries have less opiate use and fewer opiate overdose deaths than those that do not.

I believe, from my personal experience and from the research, that cannabis dispensaries are saving lives every day in Canada. At my dispensary, people tell me that I helped them get off opiates, helped them improve their health, helped save their life. This happens all the time.

It's similar with alcohol. Many cannabis people find, when they're using alcohol, that they can get off alcohol by using cannabis. Cannabis is a substitute for more dangerous drugs in so many ways.

It's easy to regulate edibles and extracts. Give them childproof packaging. Make sure that the products are properly labelled and that the dosages are correct. It's easy to do; it's not complicated at all. Further, CBD should really be de-scheduled entirely and removed from the CDSA. CBD is highly beneficial. There is no psychoactivity at all; it's an incredibly safe medicine. There's no question that CBD should be removed from the CDSA and allowed entirely.

The fact is, we can buy enough alcohol, tobacco, or even aspirin.... Aspirin you can buy without any age limit at a corner store, and one bottle of aspirin can kill you. The idea that we're treating cannabis so severely and so restrictedly when other more dangerous substances are allowed makes no sense at all. It really shows the failure of this legislation.

I would urge this committee to go beyond cannabis; to accept that cannabis is a good plant and that prohibition is wrong; to stop handing over this industry to the black market, as you've been doing for so many decades; and to recognize that it's not just cannabis. The whole war on drugs is an absolute failure, and it's time to legalize and regulate and put policies in place that are based on science. We've had this research for 40 years or more now. We know that the war on drugs is a failure. We know that cannabis is essentially harmless, and certainly less harmful than the alcohol or tobacco that is used every day.

That's what I have to say. Thanks for having me here. I hope that this committee will listen to the evidence presented and make some serious changes to this legislation. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you very much. We appreciate your enthusiasm.

We're going to go to questions now. We're going to start with Mr. Ayoub. This will most likely be en français, so if you need translation, we have translation facilities here for you.

Mr. Ayoub, you have seven minutes.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to begin by thanking you for your good comments. Yesterday was, indeed, a long day. I was a little concerned about not seeing my colleague opposite, the one who is always asking for more time to question witnesses, at the end of the meeting. Unfortunately, he missed a good part of yesterday's meeting. I am glad to see that he is in good shape today and that he will be able to ask good questions.

It's interesting to hear all the testimony. It can sometimes be quite different, even though the scope and purpose of our actions relating to the decriminalization and legalization of cannabis are the same, and the most important issue is protecting youth. It's important to ensure that the legalization of marijuana is done properly and that youth are prevented from using cannabis from an unknown origin or of an unknown quality. However, we know where the cannabis people are using now comes from: it comes from organized crime.

Today we are talking about derivatives and edible products. This is an important aspect, since youth can suffer the consequences in a major way. I would like to hear from the representative of the State of Colorado. I would like to know a little more about his experience with labelling, packaging and marketing. I would particularly like to know whether edible products are increasing the number of consumers of marijuana-based products, given that these products are more readily available and can be consumed in ways other than by smoking. Today, most people are aware that smoking is harmful. So there is already a restriction. However, there is no restriction on eating a cannabis muffin; many people eat muffins the morning. It's the same thing for candy.

I would like to understand Mr. Vigil's perspective on this. Mr. Vandrey could also answer my question.

Go ahead.

[Dr. Daniel Vigil]

Did you say there would be some translation available?

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

The translation is right here. I thought you were fully bilingual and that you were listening.

[Dr. Daniel Vigil]

Could you help me with that?

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I thought that Mr. Vigil was having full, direct translation, but he didn't have his hearing apparatus.

[Dr. Daniel Vigil]

It was regarding increased rates of use among youth. Because smoking is harder to hide than eating, people would eat more cannabis and have more problems because of that. I think that was the question.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Mr. Vandrey, did you have a sense of my question? Maybe we can go ahead in the meantime.

[Prof. Ryan Vandrey]

Sure. I got the translation here. You brought up very important points. I think that testing and quality control are absolutely important in any kind of legislation.

The other thing is how these products are going to be produced and provided, through what vehicle. Is it a muffin, brownie, gummi bears, soda? Currently, in the U.S., in Colorado, you have an infinite number of consumable products. The appeal to children is certainly important, and I think that's clearly in the legislation here and that it is absolutely paramount to anything that you guys roll out.

The other thing, is how do you test it? If there is one method of testing for a brownie, can you do the same test in a gummi bear and get accurate results? We don't know the answer to that yet. I think science needs to be done to validate test methods through different vehicles for these products.

Packaging is absolutely important to prevent unintended consumption. A lot of the problems happen—and I believe Colorado has had this issue and I'll let Mr. Vigil talk about that more—when you get people who consume cannabis-containing products and they are not aware of it, and then they have adverse reactions and things of that nature.

Education about the time course and the delay and onset of effects and the magnitude of effects is key. The other thing that's actually really important also is education about who should or shouldn't be using cannabis. In contrast to what our Sensible BC friends here are saying, it's not a harmless drug, and people with a certain genetic background or family history of psychosis will respond to these substances differently than will other folks. People with cardiovascular disease are at higher risk of cardiovascular problems due to an increase in heart rate and cardiovascular stress.

There are very important considerations that have to be made when you roll out legalization of a drug like cannabis.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I would like to continue along the same lines.

We are moving forward in stages, since the regulations are not yet part of the bill. We are not yet intensively exploring edible products to market them. That will probably be the next step.

Do you think that proceeding in stages is a good approach?

[Prof. Ryan Vandrey]

It all depends on what the step is, don't you think? Without seeing exactly what you're talking about, it's hard for me to comment. If you're going to legalize smokable products and vaporization products first and then approach edibles, it all depends on what you ultimately do with edibles and on whether there's any public health benefit or harm of ingestible products versus inhalable products. When we're not talking about medicinal use, it takes on a different context, and so the thought process needs to be a bit different. That's the challenge here.

In the context of medicinal use, edible products are easy. You put them in a gel cap.

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

The question is whether this is more dangerous than smoking. Is the access easier when eating edibles than when smoking pot?

[Prof. Ryan Vandrey]

If it's sold in the store, access is the same. I don't think it's any more or less.... Access to the product is going to be determined by the way retail sales happen. If you're selling smokable products right next to edible products, it's the same. There may be some perception of less harm with edibles versus smokables due to pulmonary concerns, but there's no science—

[Ramez Ayoub, Liberal, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Let me stop you there. I want to have an answer from Mr. Vigil.

Can you give me a short answer?

[Dr. Daniel Vigil]

Sure. In Colorado, we see a small portion of marijuana users who use only edibles, but the vast majority smoke. This goes for adolescents, high school students as well, in our surveys there. For the vast majority, their primary mode of use is smoking; we don't see a large portion using vaping or edibles.

The thought, as you may have alluded to was that it's easier to hide the latter and to be doing it during school, etc. Aside from a small number of cases, this isn't something that has been widespread.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Time is up.

Ms. Gladu, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair. I think you did a marvellous job yesterday when we had all of our long sessions.

Thanks to all the witnesses who are here.

I don't know a lot about edibles, so I'm going to try to learn something from you. I've heard a lot of discussion that we should only be allowing edibles that don't appeal to children, but the only edibles I've heard mentioned so far are cookies, candies, gummies, cakes, milkshakes, suckers, and brownies.

My question for you, Mr. Vigil, is, what are the edibles that wouldn't appeal to children?