I like to share stories. Taking the cab in from the airport, I had an older hippie driving me. He said, “What are you up to today?” I said, “I'm going to this committee to talk about marijuana.” He goes, “Holy shit, marijuana. I used to smoke that all the time when I was a younger man, but the other day I was in the garage and the kids were smoking it, and I tried a hit. I took a really big puff and I held it in, and everyone was going, 'Don't do that.'” He found out why, because one simple puff knocked him out for about 45 minutes. It brought out some paranoia feelings that he had inside of him, and he said to the people who gave it to him, “What the heck is this?” The THC content in today's marijuana is nowhere near what it was when you smoked it.
If I were to ask in this room, how many of you have smoked or are currently smoking marijuana, all of a sudden you would see people getting very nervous, but if I were to ask you how many of you are diabetic on insulin, you wouldn't hesitate to show me your latest pen. There's this stigma around marijuana use, and you're absolutely correct. Up to the age of 25, the brain is developing. Any exposure under that age will lower the IQ, lower the ability to reason properly. It will have devastating consequences in the people who are genetically predisposed to have either schizophrenia or psychosis. It will unmask psychosis. We see it in our emergency department on a regular basis.
The other thing is that this magical drug that's supposed to prevent nausea actually causes cyclic vomiting, so people who smoke it in excess end up in our emergency departments for hours upon hours, and they can't stop smoking.
You're absolutely correct. The most important thing, Michael, is that the risk assessment centre in the brain doesn't fully develop until about age 25 to 30, so our most vulnerable population, whether they are in utero or whether they are growing up, are going to be impacted by this. That's why we have to have good data to show how we are going to treat these young men and women when they end up in this situation, because we're not treating them well right now.