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Health Canada

Ottawa, Ontario

K1A 0K9

January 15, 2018

Re: Proposed Approach to the Regulation of Cannabis

To the Cannabis Legalization and Regulation Secretariat,

I am writing to contribute to the consultation on Health Canada’s Proposed Approach to the Regulation of Cannabis. I have been very engaged on this file, and have heard from many constituents – cannabis patients, small producers, and other stakeholders – throughout this process.

While I have long been in favour of the legalization of cannabis and cannabis products, I was disappointed with the legislation developed by this government. In the fall of 2017 I submitted 18 amendments to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health during their consideration of Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts.

The legislation did not go far enough. We must ensure that regulations will not further stigmatize vulnerable populations and that those with criminal records due to cannabis prohibition are pardoned. Regulations should promote a diverse market that includes micro-producers and small businesses.  Cannabis must be fully legalized, and the tax rate must keep costs in line with current dispensary sales if the government wants to get rid of the illicit drug market. This is also a unique opportunity to ensure that the legal cannabis industry is environmentally sustainable from the beginning.

Individuals who have histories of non-violent, lower-risk criminal activity who seek to obtain a security clearance so they can participate in the legal cannabis industry should be fully permitted to participate in the legal cannabis industry. The enforcement of cannabis laws disproportionately affects marginalized and racialized communities. These same communities should not be prevented from fully participating in a legal industry. Those with criminal records for cannabis offences due to prohibition already face multiple barriers that limit their full participation in society (for example, obtaining employment due to a criminal record); we should be focusing on reducing these barriers, not strengthening them. I am disappointed that the legislation and proposed regulations do not include any plans to pardon those convicted of activities that will no longer be illegal, and remain hopeful that federal legislation may be introduced that will automatically pardon those individuals.

Canada should look to Oakland’s Equity Permit Program for an example of how to address reparations and discrimination within the cannabis industry. The program’s goal is to minimize barriers of entry into the industry by giving a certain percentage of business licenses to victims of the war on drugs and those local to the area. While the Equity Permit Program is not perfect, it is a step in the right direction. When the program was announced in the spring of 2017, Oakland’s mayor said they were “committed to combating the disparities that have plagued the cannabis industry in the past.” Canada should follow suit and address the discrimination that has plagued marginalized communities and will plague the legal cannabis industry in this country if not addressed. Allowing those with histories of non-violent, lower risk criminal activity to take part in the cannabis industry will contribute to Canada having a diverse, competitive market, one of the recommendations from The Final Report of the Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation. The Task Force also recommended that licensing and production controls encourage the participation of small producers. This is important if the market in Canada is to be more than just a few major producers. Patients and recreational cannabis consumers should have the option to support small, local producers. I fully support the inclusion of micro-cultivators and micro-processors.

Bill C-45 did not include any mention of the environmental impacts of indoor and outdoor cannabis cultivation, and neither does Health Canada’s Proposed Approach to the Regulation of Cannabis. Research has shown that indoor cannabis production is incredibly energy intensive; in the United States it is estimated to account for 1% of national electricity use. While criminalization has led to indoor cultivation and the impossibility of regulatory standards for cannabis production, legalization will not change the environmental impacts of cannabis production without proper regulations. The government should look into incentivizing businesses and producers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices, and sustainable energy use.

Boulder County in Colorado has established a Marijuana Energy Impact Offset Fund, which requires cannabis growers to either offset their electricity use with local renewable energy, or pay a 2.16 cent charge per kWh. The fee goes towards funding to educate cannabis cultivators on the best cultivation practices with regards to energy consumption and promote sustainable practices.

Other jurisdictions that have legalized cannabis have begun to tackle this issue. We cannot ignore the impact that a thriving cannabis industry will have on Canada’s carbon emissions, and climate change goals. Canada should develop and enforce strong environmental regulations for the cannabis industry as it is legalized, not retroactively.

I am excited by the prospect of a fair and sustainable cannabis industry in Canada. Let us be a global example on international drug law by creating a cannabis industry that focuses on a triple bottom line: economic, social, and environmental sustainability.

Thank you for your consideration. I would be very happy to meet with the department and staff to discuss these matters further.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth May, O.C.
Member of Parliament
Saanich – Gulf Islands
Leader of the Green Party of Canda

The post Elizabeth’s Submission to the Consultations on Health Canada’s Proposed Approach to the Regulation of Cannabis appeared first on Elizabeth May.

December 6, 2017

Re: Consultations on the Proposed Excise Duty Framework for Cannabis Products

Dear Minister Morneau,

I am writing to contribute to the consultation on the Finance Department’s Proposed Excise Duty Framework for Cannabis Products. I have worked with various stakeholders in my constituency to develop the following submission.

The Proposed Excise Duty Framework for Cannabis Products is intended to restrict youth access and deter illicit activities. While I applaud and share these goals, the proposed taxation framework is unlikely to achieve either aim. Overall, the framework is based on existing taxation of other luxury products currently covered by the Excise Act, 2001 like tobacco, wine and spirits. This was a sensible decision. However, subjecting cannabis products sold under the Cannabis Act for medical purposes to the duty rates and conditions of the excise duty framework is misguided and counter-productive.

Multiple government spokespeople have asserted that the government task force recommended implementing the same tax regime for medical and recreational cannabis, fearing that making medical cannabis more affordable would incentivize people to utilize that system in search of cheaper drugs. This argument is a fallacy. Firstly, patients seeking access to medical cannabis require authorization from a physician or nurse practitioner, a document the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons in Ontario, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Saskatchewan acknowledge is akin to a prescription. The fear that citizens seeking less expensive cannabis would flock to medical cannabis is predicated on two assumptions: that those people would actually approach a physician or nurse-practitioner for what is essentially a prescription on false terms; and that the physician or nurse practitioner would then authorize their use of medical cannabis without just cause. There is no reason to believe such things, in large part because the incentive for recreational users of cannabis to attempt to access medical cannabis is much greater right now than it will be once cannabis is legalised. At the moment, recreational cannabis users have the choice to risk arrest, fines and incarceration to illegally acquire the drug, or to attempt to access it under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations (ACMPR). Not only are such attempts negligible, but the people who would try such a thing are more likely to do so now while cannabis is still illegal, rather than after legalization.

Secondly, studies show that even though current legislation allows physicians and nurse-practitioners special dispensation to authorize the use of medical cannabis, they are demonstrably reluctant to exercise it.

The Canadian Aids Society and researchers from the University of British Columbia, the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia at the University of Victoria and the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries conducted a study, called the Cannabis Access for Medical Purposes Survey. Their results showed that “finding a physician to support an application to access cannabis for medical purposes is a challenge for many respondents.” Among respondents who discussed using cannabis for medical cannabis with their physicians, more than a quarter of them said that even though their physicians recommended such a course of medication, they refused to endorse their patients’ application for authorized access to medical cannabis. Their reluctance to authorize medical cannabis for their patients is attributed to widespread sigma and controversy regarding its use. Addressing this stigma and consequent reluctance in future legislation was one of the study’s key recommendations. Far from addressing that stigma, imposing an excise or “sin tax” on medical cannabis will only exacerbate the problem.

Thirdly, the issue of medical cannabis’ affordability already drives many ill Canadians requiring the drug to the black market. Another key finding from the Canadian Aids Society study was that “despite the existence of a legal framework, a substantial number of chronically and seriously ill Canadians continue to access cannabis for medical purposes without legal authorization and from illegal sources.” More than half the study’s respondents reported “that they were sometimes or never able to afford to buy a sufficient quantity of cannabis to relieve their symptoms and approximately one third reported that they often or always choose between cannabis and other necessities (food, rent, other medicines) because of lack of money.” To levy taxes on medical cannabis under the proposed framework is to increase medical cannabis users’ incentive to go to the black market for their medicine, as not only will the “sin tax” likely affect their willingness to discuss cannabis with their physicians, it will make the drug less affordable. Eliminating the illicit sale of cannabis will require not only making taxes low enough overall to compete with black market prices for recreational users, but also eliminating those barriers that already exist for medicinal users.

Many opponents of eliminating taxes on medical cannabis have pointed to Washington State as an example of unworkable parallel taxation systems for medical and recreational cannabis. What those people fail to recognize is that there was no effective state licensing requirements, production standards or agricultural or health regulations on medical cannabis in Washington State. Under such circumstances it is unsurprising that the differing tax regimes proved unworkable. The solution is clearly to maintain the same regulations for medical and non-medical cannabis, but exempt the former from the excise tax, as is the case with prescription drugs.

Furthermore, many of my constituents are greatly concerned about the disproportionate cost imposed on small producers by the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA’s) proposed excise stamp regime and complex documentation requirements. Requiring licensed producers to source acquire and retain excise stamps in sufficient volumes to cover incoming orders will impose significant additional costs on producers. The complex summaries, monthly reporting and audits will also necessitate an onerous workload upon small producers. All this taken together with the expected bond posting per the proposed licensing requirements is estimated to cost between $150,000 and $200,000. Multiple producers from my riding assess that they will require an additional $500,000 investment to cover these obligations, an arduous sum indeed for a small, local business.

Thank you for your consideration. I would be very happy to meet with the department and staff to discuss these matters further.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth May, O.C.

Member of Parliament

Saanich – Gulf Islands

Leader of the Green Party of Canada

A PDF copy of the original submission is available, here.

The post Elizabeth’s Submission to the Consultations on the Proposed Excise Duty Framework for Cannabis Products appeared first on Elizabeth May.

C-46. This bill presents a number of complicated and novel problems for lawmakers. I will say first that I will vote for this bill at second reading. It should get to committee.

There are many things in here that we need to move ahead with. I hope that my speech can reflect on the areas where the bill will need amendments. It is particularly in the sections that would enable the Governor General to make regulations in the future that we should approach regulation-making with caution.

Let me start by saying what is important about Bill C-46.

It is important that we do more to deal with the carnage on our roads caused by people whose judgment is not only impaired by drinking but who also fail to understand that an automobile is a lethal weapon. Persons getting behind the wheel when they have had anything to drink at all should be as socially unacceptable today as people lighting up a cigarette on an elevator.

Social norms change over time. The social norms once allowed us to give the people around us the present of second-hand smoke without thinking anything about it, but it is now viewed as a reckless activity. One would have thought that with the attention and the hard work of wonderful groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, it would be clear to all Canadians as responsible citizens that if they have had anything to drink at all, they do not drive. Unfortunately, we see far too many examples of innocent people, children, or whole families killed on our highways by people who have gotten behind the wheel when they should never have done so. We need to do more to stop the threat of drunk drivers on our roads. This bill would begin to do that. This bill would begin to take some important steps.

Certainly it is important for people to know that they can be pulled over on reasonable grounds and have a breath test applied by a roadside breathalyzer. On reasonable grounds, police officers would be able to stop more people for randomized breathalyzer testing on the side of the road. It is important to note that Bill C-46 would require a police officer to have reasonable grounds to believe a person is committing an offence or at any time in the last three hours has committed an offence as a result of the consumption of drugs or alcohol. Throughout this bill there are requirements for reasonable grounds. Still, the threshold for giving a roadside breathalyzer test is going to be reduced, with the goal of getting more people who are drinking and driving off our roads, and that is important.

The risk here is that we would be conflating the legalization of cannabis with problems of driving and substance abuse, and this is where we need to be careful. In 2014, an astonishing 74,800 cases were reported across Canada of driving impaired due to alcohol or drug use. There were 74,800 cases in a single year reported by police. Of those cases, 97% were alcohol-related and 3% involved drugs. That is not to say that drugs are not the problem, but it is clear that in order of priority, alcohol is the bigger problem as a percentage, empirically, on our roads.

However, then we begin to dive into it. Certainly with the legalization of cannabis, reasonable concerns have been raised. What if people are impaired by having imbibed, smoked, or eaten cannabis and are now under the influence of cannabis and have THC in their system? This is where, as I dive into the evidence, it gets a lot more complicated, because if we are going to base our policies on evidence, it is not at all clear that the same kind of physiological effects occur from imbibing cannabis as from drinking alcohol.

For example, studies by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, as reported in The New York Times, talk about the estimates from a number of studies. In the case of the dangers of drunken driving, for instance, 20-year-old drivers with a blood alcohol content of 0.08%, which is the legal limit across Canada, had an almost 20-fold increase in the risk of a fatal accident.

When the researchers look at those who have imbibed cannabis, they find that the effect of using cannabis does affect driving, but it is within the same range as the legal allowable levels of blood alcohol. It is not at all clear. According to a 2012 study from the Journal of Psychopharmacology, only 30% of people who were under the influence of THC failed a field test of their ability to show physical coordination and good cognitive reflexes. The effect of smoking marijuana is clearly going to be very different from the effect of drinking and driving.

This is again research from the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. For the purpose of explaining this, I am going to use the term stoned drivers and drunk drivers. They concluded that stoned drivers drive differently from drunken ones and have different deficits. Drunk drivers tend to drive faster than normal and overestimate their skill, whereas the opposite is true for stoned drivers. More worrying, when we are dealing with the application of criminal law, is that those who are habitual users of marijuana can have levels of THC in their systems that do not affect their judgment. The metabolizing in the body of cannabis is very different from alcohol. To spot someone who is drunk, we need to test for ethanol. To spot someone who has been using cannabis, we look for THC, but the THC can be present in the bloodstream days after the last use and when a person is not actually impaired.

As we are going forward with developing tests and deciding when someone is criminally responsible, we need to approach this problem differently. If we find a level of blood alcohol of 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood, we know someone was driving over the limit. That is not going to be so easy to figure out with THC.

Those who are studying this recommend some interesting approaches, including in the very useful study by the U.S. Department of Transportation, from February 2015, called “Drug and Alcohol Crash Risk”. I recommend this to other MPs who are looking for data. It is from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation. They looked at the adjustment for age, gender, ethnicity, alcohol concentration levels, and so on. They did not find that high risk correlated with drug use at all when they corrected for these other social factors.

What they recommend is fascinating. They say that if we are going to put resources into avoiding people being killed on the road, it would be far better to focus on banning establishments for imbibing cannabis away from home. I want to underscore this, because I do not think anyone has mentioned it in the debate so far. If we are legalizing cannabis, as we are, do not have facilities and establishments that encourage people to get in their cars to drive to a place to have cannabis. Encourage there being no driving involved and create the social norms that say do not drive at all when imbibing cannabis.

It is going to be very hard, and a failing test for the science, to find mechanisms for roadside testing for THC. It is far better to focus on where the threat to life and limb clearly is. It is overwhelmingly people who get behind the wheel of a car after having too much to drink. Frankly, I think a glass of wine or a beer is too much to drink to get behind the wheel of a car, yet we have a social construct and culture that there is nothing wrong with it. I have always loved the show Cheers, with the friendly guy behind the bar. Take a bus there. Take the subway there. We need to change our norms around what is okay, because a car is a lethal weapon.

Finally, I want to hope that when we take the bill to committee, we look at unintentional consequences. If we make it easier for police officers to pull someone over for a breathalyzer, we need to watch for issues of racial profiling. We need to watch for the unintended consequences of additional searches that take place once someone is pulled to the side of the road.

I am not standing against the bill, by any means, but I think these issues are far more complicated than the debate we have had so far tonight. I look forward to seeing the bill sent to committee. I hope that when we look at regulating THC and finding ways to do roadside testing that we do not start with the assumption that if we can find THC in a person’s body they have been reckless in their use of an automobile. Those two may not correlate the way blood alcohol levels indeed correlate toward recklessness and unsafe driving.

The post Parliament: Bill C-46 – Raising issues surrounding cannabis consumption and impaired driving legislation appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has given a very balanced speech. I took the bill back to the riding with me and spent a lot of time studying it right after it came out for first reading around April 13. I took it back and read it through over the Easter weekend, and I shared with my constituents what I distilled from it.

It has that sense of balance. I was concerned about a number of aspects. I also want to make sure that public health is central. I am a mom and a grandmom, and I may be the only person who grew up in the 60s who never smoked cannabis. I have concerns about putting anything in my lungs. I have always been cautious, and I am cautious with my kids.

That is why I thought the bill did a good job in terms of having public information and having strict controls. If anything, as I mentioned earlier in this place, the one concern I have about the bill as drafted is that the punishments are overly harsh in some of the criminal aspects for someone who is over 18 and is distributing marijuana to someone under 18.

How does my colleague think we will confront what I think are some fear-based tactics? I have looked up the Colorado experience online, researching it since we have been sitting here, as I had not been able to get in on the debate. It seems to me that what we have heard about Colorado—and perhaps the hon. member can throw some light on it—is not the case; rather, the teens in Colorado were already consuming cannabis much more than teens in other states before it took the measures to legalize. Their experience thus far appears to be cautiously optimistic. They are not seeing more fatalities or car accidents. They are not seeing more organized crime.

The governor, who did not want this to pass when it came forward as a referendum, now says that he would not want to go back to prohibition. He describes the war on drugs, in his words, as a train wreck.

Getting this right is going to be important for Canada, because I think we are going to lead the way for a lot of jurisdictions.

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