Health committee  Dear members of the Standing Committee on Health, I'm an adolescent medicine specialist and associate professor of pediatrics at McMaster University. Thank you for the invitation to speak as a representative of the Canadian Paediatric Society on Bill C-45, specifically regarding

Health committee  The point I was trying to make was that we already know that Canada's youth are experimenting with cannabis at a rate of about 30%, depending on what age. By 15 years of age, 30% of Canadian youth will have already used or will have used cannabis in the last year. The reason the

Health committee  That's getting a little bit outside my area of expertise, to be honest, but I guess I have a couple of important points that I mentioned in my brief. We need to partner with youth leaders and public health agencies, and we need to have clear messages in preparation, and not just

Health committee  For the first question, yes, we need it to be adequately funded, and I agree with your statement on that: messages need to come sooner. I don't agree with the ticketable offence under 18. That's going to penalize youth and is not helpful.

Health committee  First of all, the CPS statement is based on the scientific literature, not on belief but rather on the facts that we have at the time we're reviewing the data. As I mentioned in my brief, the relationship between psychosis and cannabis is complicated. My understanding of the st

Health committee  It's a great question. Schizophrenia isn't my main area of expertise, but there are a number of studies. I'm happy to give you those references. They're referenced in the Canadian Paediatric Society's statement, indicating that it's not that the psychosis came first and then they

Health committee  My understanding is that in the current legislation we're talking about pot and growing of plants. Edibles are not mentioned.

Health committee  My concern is that we need to make sure that this issue around young children having accidental ingestions with edibles is up there, that people know about this risk so that it's not lost.

Health committee  I'm not saying that edibles should be legalized. I am saying there are a lot of concerns about young people and toddlers ingesting edibles if they're around in the household. Even though those childproofing measures you mentioned might prevent harm, having them around is a concer

Health committee  One of the recommendations from the Canadian Paediatric Society is that one way to mitigate some of the risks, because we know that youth and young adults are going to continue to experiment, would be to allow only lower-potency cannabis to be available legally to those under the

Health committee  Yes, a lower concentration of THC, because THC is the psychoactive ingredient.

Health committee  Just to be clear, as I said in my opening statements, there is no safe age for cannabis use. Right?

Health committee  As a Canadian Paediatric Society, we don't recommend, obviously, any children or youth experimenting, because of all the risks I've outlined. In terms of the age of legalization, again, we know that adolescents are already experimenting. The age, whether it's 21 or 25, is not go

Health committee  What I'm suggesting is that obviously that would be a very grave concern. As a physician, getting back to what Ian spoke about, we'd be assessing that young person and trying to understand why. That would be a mark showing that there's something going wrong, most likely, in that

Health committee  It goes back to some of the comments of our first speaker this morning around mandating that young people get assistance, whether from a physician or from some kind of connection with counselling and involvement with the family to understand what's going on.