Health committee  Thank you for your question, Mr. Lizon. We can talk prescription drugs for moment, and you will get a variety of different answers depending on the witness, whether we want to talk about drug addiction, drug dependence, drug abuse, or drug misuse. For the context of our discussion here around prescription drugs, we're seeing either non-therapeutic use, with people using them for non-medical reasons, or secondary negative effects as a result of people using them even for therapeutic reasons.

Health committee  Some would argue that if you use any substance for a non-therapeutic or illegal use, it's immediately called “abuse”. Now we're getting into taxonomy, definitional issues. But the point is that you don't necessarily need to be dependent to have immediate harms from the use of a drug.

Health committee  I suppose that's the central question of how did we actually get here? I think there is no one answer. You hear that a lot, I'm sure, from your witnesses, and I apologize for repeating the line. One would argue that the emergence of opiates as a heavily marketed product to deal with a variety of pain elements was done with the confidence of trying to ease the pain of Canadians.

Health committee  Thank you for the comment. I have a couple of points. One is that we learned as we entered into this discussion that there's a tremendous amount of mobility among markets, in people who want to use drugs. That's part of the reason for having effective prevention in the first place, of course, but also reaching out to those who are in difficulty when they are dependent.

Health committee  Yes, and that would possibly be some transborder stuff going on there—

Health committee  —because we haven't seen it in Canada yet. Exactly. If I might, Mr. Chair, comment on the other point about the corrections system and 80% of new inmates having addiction problems, one of the strategies that CCSA has long advocated is that we have a coherent offender strategy in this country.

Health committee  There's always a danger in bringing a lot of people to the table and creating an expectation of collaboration on a go-forward basis. That said, I'm very keen.... Let me put it this way. The fact that everybody has been to the table and remains at the table and is prepared to invest their own resources, time and moneys toward commonly understood and advocated-for recommendations is a very significant addition, value-added, to whether a federal investment would be provided to this equation.

Health committee  Thank you. There are two sides of the coin. One is that police currently incur significant costs, we would argue, around the illicit use of prescription drugs. They might simply not be aware of it. The police leaders and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police were the lead external partners on the development of recommendations around this, along with Public Safety.

Health committee  We have requested $1 million a year for the implementation and coordination of the strategy. With that money, we will be able to encourage not only the participation, but also the investment from other levels of government, other professional organizations and the non-profit sector.

Health committee  Thank you. I would have asked you to talk about the problem because that's exactly what is happening with stimulants. Across the country, we are seeing that the availability and accessibility of those drugs—Ritalin, Adderall and that whole range of drugs prescribed for attention deficit issues—is very high.

Health committee  Unfortunately, that still has harmful effects and could be dangerous if consumed. The abusive use of stimulants would be part of that strategy of prevention, more specifically when it comes to the recommendation on awareness raising. Ms. Robeson should correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that we have no specific recommendations for the university demographic in terms of those drugs.

Health committee  We have mostly been focusing on ways to better educate physicians who are working in emergency clinics. For instance, we talk about what tools those physicians need to have and what questions they should ask those who come to see them. We emphasize the importance of identifying those individuals who could try to commit fraud and those who are there to try to find a physician.

Health committee  Thank you, sir. Actually, that's a very good question because people often ask about the difference between the two. If we go back to the CCSA Act, which was circulated, our role is really about bringing together all levels of government, and the not-for-profit and private sectors.

Health committee  The U.S. is number one in per capita use, and there is Europe and Australia. But in a lot of these countries the problem is not manifesting itself as we have seen here, because the supply availability is very different, or at least it hasn't reached our level yet. This is an opportunity for Canada to lead by saying, “If you're going down the road of expanding accessibility to certain drugs, be mindful of these practices”.

Health committee  Last year, at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Health Canada tabled a resolution on a take-back initiative, encouraging individuals to take the drugs out of their cabinet and bring them back to pharmacies. That resolution was adopted by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. It provided a toehold, if I can say it that way, for the international community to consider in determining where prescription drugs fit in the realm of abuse.