Was that through ingestion of an edible?
Evidence of meeting #68 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was edibles.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #68 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was edibles.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
9:35 a.m.
Manager, Marijuana Health Monitoring and Research, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
Some portion of those were about smokable marijuana. Children can pick up a bud and put it in their mouth as well. The majority were edibles.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB
What are your thoughts on home cultivation, at four plants per household? Do you think that should be allowed?
9:35 a.m.
Manager, Marijuana Health Monitoring and Research, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
I think it's going to happen whether you allow it or not, so, again, bringing something into the regulated market is probably better than having it unregulated.
In Colorado for home-grows, the real problem we've run into is extended plant counts and the ability for a caretaker in the medical realm to grow for multiple people, so you have these very large grows that on paper are legal but are really contributing to the black market and diversion.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB
Mr. Larsen, I don't know where B.C. is going to go with its distribution decisions, whether it will be with something like the LCBO. I don't even know whether or not they have a liquor control board in B.C., but you've heard where they're going here in Ontario. They've already started to shut down some dispensaries and to arrest the individuals inside. It has occurred in your environment as well, I'm certain.
If the B.C. government determines that you cannot do this, you indicate that you will continue to have customers shop with you anyway. I question that. I don't know if you have a storefront right now. I have no idea about dispensaries, Mr. Larsen, because I've never been in one and perhaps I'll come to visit yours just to learn some more about it. I just don't know how you will continue to operate if your government in B.C. decides to have it in a more controlled environment.
9:40 a.m.
Director, Sensible BC
It's an interesting point. Let's make it clear. They are trying their hardest in Ontario to get rid of dispensaries already. They've been trying for a while and they are failing miserably.
There are dispensaries in every major city in Canada, and in most minor ones now, just as there are bong shops. I told you that bongs are illegal, too, and we fought, and we were raided, and people went to jail over bongs big time in the 1990s.
The problem you have in enforcing these laws is that the courts are not willing to give us severe penalties, and we have an overburdened justice system. They laid dozens of charges in Toronto and they've kept only a handful of them. In the Cannabis Culture raid when they went after Marc and Jodie Emery and a few others, not a single one of their suppliers was arrested or charged. They're selling cannabis from many companies that have labelling, websites, and phone numbers where you can call them, and people are selling extracts. They could easily, if they wanted to spend the time and effort, go after these people. They're not, because the police and our justice system are not able to handle this kind of mass civil disobedience campaign that we're engaging in.
We like the phrase “overgrowing the government”. There are too many of us willing to go to the end on this for you to keep up. Do you really want to put me in jail for selling cannabis? Is that where you think I belong? I'm going to keep doing it, and that's going to be the only option. I'm going to keep giving away seeds, and I'm going to keep using cannabis.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
9:40 a.m.
Director, Sensible BC
Some dispensaries do, and some don't. We don't right now, but we're transitioning towards that, and I would be happy to do that. We're happy to follow reasonable regulations. I'm not an anarchist who doesn't want to follow the rules, but if the rules are saying that I can't operate and I can't exist, then of course we're going to break those rules.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
9:40 a.m.
Director, Sensible BC
Oh, yes, we file taxes. All of our staff are registered. We do all the deductions and all those kinds of things as well as we can. I can't speak for every dispensary. There are hundreds across Canada. Some operate in many different ways than do others.
But you can't stop us. You don't have the capability and the policing and the courts to deal with what we're doing. That's why it's been so successful, and we're going to keep doing that.
The rules have to take that into consideration, that there is already a vibrant and dynamic cannabis industry, and we are committed to what we're doing. That needs to be incorporated into legalization or else you have to find a way to compete with us and produce better products at a lower price with a higher selection and higher quality. If you do that, we'll go out of business, and I will consider that a victory on my end. If my dispensary can't operate because there is better, cheaper, higher-quality cannabis available from a legal source, then I've won. I don't need to run a dispensary. I just want cannabis to be legal and available, so that's how I see it. But until that day comes, as long as my dispensary can provide products that aren't legally available, that people want to get, we'll keep doing that.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Doug Eyolfson Liberal Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Thank you very much.
I have the disadvantage of being down the list, which means that a lot of the questions I thought of have already been asked. I might have to expand on some of the stuff we've already talked about, so there may be a bit of repetition.
We had testimony yesterday from different international experts, in particular from Great Britain. They're watching us quite closely. Again, we're getting competing testimony from different corners about how to go ahead with this. It was pointed out that this is a fairly new thing we're doing. Only one nation on earth has ever legalized this. On a national level, we're number two. We've heard a lot of evidence saying that we should take a cautious, step-wise approach.
We are committed to regulating edibles. We just haven't started with that yet. We understand that Colorado had some challenges.
Mr. Vigil, I understand you had challenges with edibles in the beginning. Could you expand on some of the problems you had with edibles at the initial rollout and on whether or not you agree that it's a good idea for us to be rolling this out more gradually?
9:40 a.m.
Manager, Marijuana Health Monitoring and Research, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
Really, our primary concern initially was seeing an increase in calls to the poison centre and emergency department visits, in particular among younger age groups. We had a few cases of over-consumption leading to accidents. That was the impetus to try to increase regulation.
As to the delay in rolling it out, 288 days doesn't seem like enough time for you to get all of the edible regulations together. I'm not a legislator, so I don't know, but I guess I would recommend erring on the side of giving it more time, not only to work on the legislation but also to continue to learn more from other jurisdictions, like Colorado and the other states in the United States, that have legalized. I mentioned that we've seen, for one year, some decrease in those numbers. We'd like to see what happens with the data that's coming up next spring. The more of that information you have, the better decisions you can make.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Doug Eyolfson Liberal Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Dr. Vandrey, we talked about packaging. You want to make it non-appealing and childproof for edibles, which I would agree with. Now, we had a discussion yesterday regarding plain packaging and some of the precedents set in the tobacco industry, particularly the success that Australia has had with decreasing smoking. Despite the misinformation from the tobacco industry about this, it does appear to have cut down smoking rates.
Would you recommend, not just in edibles but in basically all cannabis products, plain packaging—the way that we're going to be moving, and the way Australia has, with tobacco?
9:45 a.m.
Prof. Ryan Vandrey
For cannabis, I think it would be very wise to learn from the lessons of tobacco and alcohol regulation, very clearly. Recognizing the harms with over-consumption, recognizing the harms with advertising—it's all relevant here. It seems silly to recreate the wheel for cannabis rather than to learn from or use alcohol and tobacco regulation as a model for how to best roll out cannabis, or to look at what's currently being done in Uruguay or in the states in the U.S. that have already legalized non-medicinal use. You have models there. You have regulations on the books in those states and in Uruguay. Look at what they've done and talk to them about what their limitations are, about what they would do if they could go back and change it. Potentially you could come up with a maybe slightly improved model.
The key here is that you really need to establish, and you need to have confidence in, what your unit dose will be and how you will test and do quality control. If you solve those issues, then I think the rest of it should fall in place.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
9:45 a.m.
NDP
9:45 a.m.
Manager, Marijuana Health Monitoring and Research, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
They were part of our initial legalization passed in 2012. Dispensary sales were allowed to begin January 1, 2014.
9:45 a.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
It seems that everything I've heard about the experience of legalizing cannabis, whether in the Netherlands when they did it, or in Colorado, Washington, or Alaska, is that when you legalize, there is a spike in pretty much everything, and then it levels off, and then things drop.
Am I correct that that's sort of what happened in terms of the accidental ingestion? When it was legalized, I would presume, more people tried edibles because they were legal; some people had experiences with them; there were more poison control calls; it levelled off, and now you're seeing a drop. Is that correct?
9:45 a.m.
Manager, Marijuana Health Monitoring and Research, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
We're seeing a slight decline from the peak, but it still remains higher than it was previously. By the way, you say everything, but in terms of use, we have not seen increases in youth or adult use.
9:50 a.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
We heard evidence from Colorado that there was an increase immediately after legalization and then it started to drop after that. Am I wrong about that?
9:50 a.m.
Manager, Marijuana Health Monitoring and Research, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
There was not, according to our primary data sources.
9:50 a.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
In terms of regulations, you said we should go slowly. Could we not just adopt Colorado's regulations on edibles? Where are the gaping holes in Colorado's legislation, things we don't know?
9:50 a.m.
Manager, Marijuana Health Monitoring and Research, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
We don't think we've perfected it, and there are limitations within the system. For example, with our laboratory proficiency testing, we've had challenges. A lot of these come from the federal limitations. There are things, particularly pesticides, that for all other products are regulated at a federal level, and those resources aren't available to us for cannabis. There is a variety of ways in which we would not say that our system is perfect and adoptable.
9:50 a.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Nothing is perfect; we're in politics.
In terms of getting the major things right, the single servings, the childproof containers, the no marketing to children, the stamped products, and some form of regulations about potency and dosage, I presume those are done in Colorado. Are they?
