Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague who just spoke because he had words of wisdom, words that need to be heard across the land. Let us not get all excited about doing something new.
For example, when I first came to the House we were spending millions of taxpayers' dollars against the use of tobacco but at the same time we were taxing tobacco. Let me make a forecast that within a very few years we will be spending millions of dollars and advertising against the use of a drug which cannot and will not be controlled. We will not have any income from it either.
This is a dangerous move. Like my colleague who just spoke, I have 12 RCMP detachments in my constituency. Three or four of them have highway patrols. Members should ask any one of the highway patrols about the use of marijuana. They should ask them upfront, in private, and they will say that marijuana is more dangerous on the highway right now than alcohol.
A car can be completely out of control and a driver can be pulled over, but the test given will show a blood alcohol content of only about .02. Yet the driver could be worse off and have less control over the vehicle than had he or she blown more than .08.
Members of every single detachment tell me the same story. I do not want to hear these crapped up figures that people have come up with from some supportive scientists who want to see this situation continue. If we were to go to the Province of B.C., we would find unquestionably that the largest cash crop in the province comes from the illegal sale of marijuana. That is a fine statement for a province that is growing, and that will continue.
What else will continue is the actual uncontrolled amount of the acidity in the marijuana grown. It can be doubled or tripled. So one joint next week or a year from now will do three times as much damage as what we have at present.
I served as a justice of the peace for 25 years and I had these young people come before me. I was situated right in the centre of an area with four detachments. It was very convenient, 24 hours a day, to act very quickly. I felt sorry for these young people. They would come in and the fine was $100 plus $4 in costs. I never saw them ever take the money out of their wallets. They always had the money in their pockets. I felt badly for them but it was the in thing to do.
Instead of pushing this bill, the government should be taking money to advertise the growing danger of this drug to society. That is what we should be doing. We should be getting concrete scientific evidence as to what it could do. The government is so in favour of trying to reach out to get young votes at the cost of destroying their lives.
When I go home at night from here, I often stop at Tim Hortons and have--
