Speech: Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak on Bill C-45, but like Senator Hartling, I will choose to start on a lighter, more celebratory note. Today is March 21, Nowruz Mobarak, in many parts of the world. Today is a very big holiday, and I wish it was here, but that’s a matter for another day.

I want to thank Senator Dean, who has done such an outstanding job in bringing us so far, and all the senators who have weighed in on this debate with such fervour and such excellent research. I hope all of these questions that have been raised today and will be raised today and tomorrow will be addressed at committee.

Like Senator Lankin, I would like to start with history, because, like many other things, Canada’s relationship with cannabis has not been static; it has evolved over time, as recently as in 2011. The previous government amended the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to bring in sweeping penalties in the form of mandatory minimum sentences.

But I’d actually like to go further back in history to the early years of cannabis legalization and the groundwork of prohibition that was laid in the 1920s. To a large extent, it was based on misinformation, mythology and simply wrong facts. For instance, the Los Angeles police chief said, and he was not challenged:

Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, . . . become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without . . . any sense of moral responsibility.

We know that this is not true, but I also found very significant and disturbing expressions of racism in the debate. A Canadian book called The Black Candle talks about the “negro” drug peddlers and Chinese opium dealers of “fishy blood” that are out of control.

A year after this book, The Black Candle, was released, Canada outlawed cannabis. I raise this because we should know some of the origins of this debate and about the sentiments that have permeated this debate for close to 100 years with its overriding stereotypes about the users and consumers of cannabis.

These stereotypes continue to dominate much of the perception and the discussion even though government commission after government commission, here in Canada and around the world, has debunked these myths. In fact, our former colleague Senator Pierre Claude Nolin in his 2002 report pointed out that:

Early drug legislation was largely based on a moral panic, racist sentiment and a notorious absence of debate . . . .

In the 95 years since cannabis has been outlawed, what has been the impact? Ken MacQueen says this is:

. . . a Canadian law that has succeeded in criminalizing successive generations, clogging the courts, wasting taxpayer resources and enriching gangsters, while failing to dampen demand for a plant that, by objective measures, is far more benign than alcohol or tobacco.

Honourable senators, today, in 2018, we are on the brink of legalizing cannabis consumption. It is fair, then, I think, to examine and compare the impact of two different approaches: one that criminalizes cannabis possession and another that takes a health prevention approach.

I’ve thought about this as a transaction. The first part, in my mind, at least, is the most basic part, which is the buying of cannabis. According to stakeholders, excluding medical users because they have their own regime, most recreational consumers of cannabis will approach a dealer. Most likely, that dealer is in some way or another connected to organized crime, since organized crime controls all of the recreational market in Canada, estimated at about $8 billion.

So you call your dealer, you meet with them and they present you with the product. They may give you one or two options. I really don’t know, but I have talked to people who do know this. There is no label on it. It doesn’t have information about the THC levels; it doesn’t have information about the CBD levels; it doesn’t have information about what its outcome could be. Will it help you sleep? Will it give you energy? Will it help you relax? Is it laced with something else? None of this information is present in the current transaction.

Under a legal and regulated system, that transaction stands to be transformed. Under the proposed regime, the adult buying the cannabis would go to a store or an online system and have access to a bunch of information that was absent before. They have information on THC levels. They have information on potency. They can trust that it’s not laced with anything. They know what the combination will do. Does it help them sleep, relax or give them energy?

I think this is an important point that may have been overlooked. Peoples under this proposed regime would have a lot more information on what they are buying and consuming. They are now informed consumers — informed consumers who can make rational and healthier choices for themselves. That is the true essence of a public health approach, which is completely different from the current system of prohibition.

I was in California last week, where it is legalized, and I took some time to go to a retail outlet in Monterey. It was located at a very busy intersection, in a mainstream kind of neighbourhood. As I entered, I wasn’t alone. I was a little nervous, so I took someone with me. There were three stages of security. I was first checked at the gate and frisked by security guards for weapons or something like that. I was then asked to produce my ID. I gave my Canadian driver’s licence. It was photocopied. And then they gave me a voucher that enabled me to enter the store.

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At the store entrance, I was checked again. The voucher was checked again for validation.

The facility inside the store was actually quite unremarkable, but as I looked at the products, I noted that they were marked with 18 per cent THC and CBD, et cetera. If I had a question, as I did have, there were consumer service representatives who were able to answer that question. There were cameras all around. What I found very interesting were the customers. They were not young adults. They were mostly middle-aged men and women. By the way, this was not a crowd of people. There was a single line that operated quite efficiently.

The second comparison I would like to make is on the current suppliers of recreational cannabis, which is organized crime. The use of violence, intimidation and exploitation ultimately jeopardize our communities and our country. They don’t care what they are selling. They don’t care about the health of their customer. They don’t care about their age. They only care about profit.

So let’s compare. In one system, organized crime has total control. In the other, legitimate producers, such as Canopy Growth, which I visited, supply regulated cannabis and provide, by the way, real jobs to communities. Under a legal system, organized crime is undercut. We are already seeing that in the U.S., in those states that have legalized cannabis. Colorado’s government has said that licensed sales now meet 70 per cent of the total estimated demand, with the balance of 30 per cent being in the “grey” market of homegrown cannabis and sales.

The third aspect I wanted to compare was the criminalization of simple possession of cannabis.

Honourable senators, since cannabis has been illegal for close to 100 years, we know that thousands of Canadians have been impacted by this law. However, despite prohibition and an increase in criminal penalties under the previous government, use by all segments of the population has been steady. As a result, the numbers of people who are being criminalized has increased.

A look at the people who have been criminalized leads to a well-grounded conclusion that racialized and Indigenous communities are overrepresented in the system.

I want to bring your attention now in particular to the Black community. In my home city of Toronto, between 2003 and 2013, Toronto police arrested Black people at three times the rate of White people for minor cannabis possession. This is despite data showing similar rates of cannabis use among different racial groups. Professor Akwasi Owusu-Bempah from the University of Toronto has concluded that the enforcement of prohibition has therefore disproportionately affected racialized communities and has so led to a disproportionately high rate of African Canadians being incarcerated.

In a general way, colleagues, I think we can all understand the impact of incarceration on our lives and the lives of our families and our communities. But in a particular way, we need to appreciate and understand the intersections of race, socio-economic factors and incarceration. After being charged or convicted of an offence, African Canadians are left more or less exiled from full participation in society as gainful employment becomes even harder for them to get because of the other systemic barriers. This is because of the disruption arrest and incarceration create in a person’s educational trajectory, because in many cases scholarships are not able to be accessed, jobs are not able to be accessed because employers and prospective employers often ask for criminal records, even when the job does not involve engaging with vulnerable populations. And depending on your socio-economic status and your capacity to lawyer up, there are lasting impacts.

Lawyer Anthony Morgan describes it I think best when he concludes:

The war on drugs has traumatized and destroyed African-Canadian lives and families, and by extension, whole African-Canadian communities.

Although I highlight the African Canadian community in particular, I would also say that anyone charged with possessing cannabis over the years has faced significant hurdles throughout their lives. Of particular note, of course, is the high rate of criminalization versus the high rate of criminalization on Indigenous youth, who account for 37 per cent of provincial-territorial custody admissions, which is five times higher than their share of youth demographics.

Fourth, I would like to touch on an issue that has been touched on many times, so I will keep it somewhat brief. It is the issue of youth and young adults’ use of cannabis and the impacts on the developing brain.

We have heard that the brain continues to develop until a young person is 25 and that cannabis can have an impact on that developing brain. We also know that Canadian youth, in particular, are using cannabis at high rates compared to other developed nations.

I think it is hard for us to project and to read the tea leaves of what will happen, but I think we have to take a look at what the evidence tells us. The evidence from south of the border shows that liberalized laws to cannabis do not lead to dramatic increases in use of cannabis by young people. I will cite the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, where use of cannabis in Colorado dropped for young people aged 12 to 17 from 11 per cent to 9 per cent. There is a slight uptick for use from the ages of 18 to 25. In Washington State, in a survey completed by 230,000 students, it was found that for youths in Grades 8, 10 and 12, their cannabis use remained unchanged for the past 10 years.

I agree with those who say that if you take marijuana out of the hands of drug dealers and put the sales behind the counters, as I say in Monterey, where it is sold under regulation and enforcement, then you are much more likely to get asked for ID.

When it comes to the effects of cannabis on the developing brain, I will simply say that I share a lot of concerns that have been expressed and I look forward to having these concerns addressed at committee. I will cite, as Senator Hartling did, Professor Jenna Valleriani at the BC Centre of Substance Use, and Professor Rebecca Haines-Saah at the University of Calgary, who stated that:

Firm conclusions that cannabis by itself is explicitly damaging to the developing brain are difficult to assess.

Finally, I think all of this is linked to education. Education is of the most importance when dealing with cannabis. Young people, adults, older people, need to understand the impact if they consider using it.

I will remind all of us that at some point we’ve all been young and we’ve all been attracted — some of you will argue that you are still young. The allure of the forbidden has an attraction all its own. I remember my first visit to Canada as a tourist in 1974 when, at a gathering in Yorkville —

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Senator, your time is up.

Is it agreed, honourable senators, five more minutes?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

Senator Omidvar: I don’t need five minutes, just a couple more.

I was offered a toke in Yorkville. I was frankly surprised by the numbers of people who were openly partaking of a forbidden substance. I was too bound by my upbringing to be anything other than totally horrified at the thought of partaking.

Fast-forward some 40 years later. I give my mother her prescription for medical cannabis to help her with pain from scoliosis of the spine. It is education that has helped patients like my mother consider and benefit from its use. It is education that helps me, as a caregiver, administer it to her and monitor it. It is education I believe in the same way that will help recreational consumers to be responsible for their actions and be aware of the dangers.

Honourable senators, I support this bill in principle. I support it because the current approach is not working. Many lives have been destroyed by prohibition that has permeated this issue for close to 100 years. It is time for a new approach.