Health committee  Thank you, and good afternoon. I'm a scientist, and for almost 20 years I've been conducting research on the impact of health warnings, product labelling, and the effect of branding and marketing in the areas of tobacco, food, and most recently, cannabis. I want to be clear that

Health committee  I can speak to that if you like. What I can tell you is that there were similar restrictions on tobacco marketing prior to Canada entertaining plain packaging. The problem, which I referenced in my comments, was that it put the onus on the government. Probably none of us knows

Health committee  Yes. That's what plain packaging does. It will provide the protection that I think that wording seeks to achieve.

Health committee  I think it's perfectly appropriate to label things like THC and some of the cannabinoids that can fall under constituent labelling. There's a whole lot of information about use and different strains. You don't need the manufacturer or the government to provide that. Consumers wil

Health committee  The first thing I would say about plain packaging is that you can allow whatever product information you want. What you're doing is restricting the types of packaging elements that can cause problems. I think it's very clear that this committee gets appropriate information on pl

Health committee  You will probably be hearing from medical doctors and others who are better positioned to answer that question. What I can tell you is that the scientific consensus is that it causes less population-level harm than tobacco and alcohol, but that should not be confused with its bei

Health committee  My knowledge is that there are no carcinogens in the product itself. Like smoking, most of the carcinogens come from combustion, when you light something on fire and inhale it. That's also true of tobacco products.

Health committee  I think the general consensus would be no, but the consensus would be that it does have addictive properties and abuse liability.

Health committee  I think that's fair to say. There are few things that compare with nicotine in terms of an addictive substance. Of course, it depends on how you use it. Lots of people use nicotine gum, and it has a very low abuse liability. When you smoke something, the mode of administration me

Health committee  That's absolutely correct.

Health committee  I think we need to be a little careful about using the tobacco and alcohol markets, because if we started regulating those markets based on public health, they would not look like they do now. Tobacco products would not be sold. Where we're at with those markets is partly due to

Health committee  I think the most important factors drawing people into the licit market are availability and price and the different types of product on offer. Anyone who uses cannabis already should not be induced to use more through branding. Branding has more impact on youth and initiation th

Health committee  I testify in court cases. I'm no stranger to the tobacco companies and their activities, but I must admit this past week I have been alarmed by the extent to which the tobacco companies have been infiltrating this discussion. I'll just leave it at that.

Health committee  Yes. It's what you said has happened in other jurisdictions for cannabis. It's the sort of system that we've gotten better at with tobacco internationally, and that is the way to reduce illicit tobacco. For the record, it is not difficult to counterfeit any packaging you might w

Health committee  Sure. I've worked with our government and governments around the world to assist with this. Right now, for other products we have rotating warnings. It's up to a government to determine the key messages and risks that they'd like to communicate. You can have a number of different