Madam Speaker, I agree very much with my hon. colleague that education is the key whenever we, as legislators, are talking about important issues like drugs or substances like alcohol and tobacco.
The hon. member for Thornhill, before Christmas, got into some trouble for comparing growing legal marijuana at home with leaving fentanyl on the shelves for children. Of course, that was just a terrible analogy that had no real basis in scientific fact. However, I just heard my hon. colleague say that, in her view, cannabis is worse than tobacco. More than 4,000 chemicals are found in tobacco smoke. Hundreds are toxic, including hydrogen cyanide, lead, acetone, arsenic, and formaldehyde, and at least 70 of those chemicals are carcinogens. One person dies of tobacco ingestion every 14 minutes in our country, yet there has never been a single death associated with cannabis ingestion directly.
Nobody asserts that cannabis should be used by children and young people. There may be an impact on brain development. However, does she really think that tobacco is less harmful as a health issue than cannabis in this country? New Democrats do not believe that.