Mr. Speaker, I do not underestimate for a moment the amount of money involved in illegal marijuana growing and trafficking. However we cannot convert marijuana to cocaine.
I understand the member's analogy about what goes out and what comes back. However people who use marijuana do not inject the drug. The basic marijuana usage we are thinking about in this issue does not involve addiction or injection drugs.
I am wildly speculating, but if marijuana is for recreational use and not addictive then people are paying for it with their spare change and are paying for it on the black market. However they are not stealing to support their recreational use of marijuana. I am making assumptions that I cannot back up.
When I talk about all of the costs of illegal drug use, I was talking about billions of dollars of direct and indirect costs. The marijuana component of growing and selling on the black market may be part of the big organized crime picture, but in terms of its actual total piece of the whole, in my view it is small.
We may learn more if this committee is put in place. I may learn a great deal. I respect the views that the hon. member has indicated, that the organized crime element of marijuana is big, because it is illegal, because it has been criminalized. If we were to decriminalize it, if it had no addictive properties, if it were treated like tobacco, it would not even be criminalized. It would not show up on the Richter scale. It would be a cash crop.
I will leave it there. I may say too much. The phone may be ringing, as I said.