in si de ha lto n. co m O ak vi lle B ea ve r | T hu rs da y, Ju ne 7, 20 18 | 40404 www.oakvillefamilyribfest.com Kick off your summer at Oakville's biggest Outdoor Summer Festival Lend a hand and make a difference Bring your friends and do something good together, while you have a good time Earn volunteer hours for school June 22 to 24 2018 sheridan college, trafalgar road campus JOIN OUR VOLUNTEER TEAM HELP ROTARY HELP OTHERS, IN OUR COMMUNITY AND AROUND THE WORLD! SUPPORT MEN IN THE FIGHT AGAINST PROSTATE CANCER $21 from the sale of each one of our exclusive $34.99 Black Brown 1826 plaid shirts will be donated to the HBC Foundation to support Prostate Cancer Canada's Plaid for Dad.Plaid for Dad Ambassador,Eric McCormack tion, the Liberal party's platform promised "evi- dence-based crime policy." So what is the evidence? Just months before the election medical experts told the parliamentary health committee mari- juana is a key cause of school dropouts, is as ad- dictive as alcohol (eight per cent of regular users will be come addicted) causes vehicular acci- dents, contains more known carcinogens than tobacco and can cause or trigger psychosis and oth- er psychiatric illnesses among people under the age of 25. That is why the last thing in the world most parents want in their schools, sport fields or communities is marijua- na. Why have they not been heard? And why is the federal government going to allow those aged 19 and over to buy and use the drug? We are calling for theWe are calling for theW age of majority for mari- juana purchase and use to be 25 years, based on the evidence. This will keep many young people out of our hospitals. In 2014 after a "4-20" street party in Vancouver, more than 50 young people jammed the local hospital emergency department throwing up and pleading for help, needing emergen-for help, needing emergen-f cy intubation and over- dose treatment. Imagine what might happen on Canada Day this year when many of the 3.8 mil- lion Canadians who have never used marijuana light up, having had no proper safety warnings. There are far too many questions regarding how our hospitals, courts and police will apply the im- paired driving law to in- troduce legalization on Ju- ly 1. We are calling for this date to be delayed by one year, until the health and safety issues can be better addressed. Where is the plan to im- plement impaired driving laws? There is no agree- ment on what level of THC in your blood is safe for driving, and no roadside test to enforce a criminal conviction is approved. Since marijuana can have hallucinogenic proper- ties, shouldn't the legal limit of THC for someone driving 50 tons of truck or car through our cites or on our highways be zero? As well, just one legal challenge could hold up any enforcement for years wait- ing for appeals and a Su- preme Court decision, re- ducing highway safety for all of us for years. Canada will need a min- imum of 3,000 specially- trained drug recognition experts to conduct 12-step tests at police stations, but only have 800 now. We also need to train 65,000 police officers and hundreds of judges on how to apply the law. And all this by July 1? Impossible. This rush to meet the July 1 legalization date is foolish. The Liberal feder-foolish. The Liberal feder-f al government pretends it is concerned about the health of Canadians by putting health warning la- bels on butter and cheese. Yet they are making itYet they are making itY easier to get a drug that has the potential to cause a whole range of health is- sues, and has no plans to place the same health warnings as it do on the la- bel for Cesamet, a synthet- ic cannabis in prescrip- tion drug form with a label that warns against depres- sion, anxiety, panic, para- noia, memory loss, dimin- ished cognitive perfor- mance, and hallucina- tions. Not fun. We are calling for allWe are calling for allW marijuana packages to have these same specific warnings of harms as Ce- samet, which are all well documented for marijua- na, another important reason to delay this bill. - Oakville's Terence Young is chair of DrugYoung is chair of DrugY Safety Canada, the ad- vocacy group he founded in 2001. OPINION lContinued from page 8 Where is the plan to implement impaired driving laws? Drug Safety Canada calls on government for answers lMORE ONLINE Check out our range of social media channels serving up content from insidehalton.com