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The Current Transcript for November 25, 2016

Host: Duncan McCue

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: You’re at the top of everyone’s list when it comes to translations. Priority one: what do they want? Where are they from? You’ll be reporting to me but you’ll be working with him when you’re in the shell.

VOICE 2: That’s what they’re calling the UFO.

DUNCAN MCCUE: Take us to your leader. A new movie called Arrival imagines what it would be like to talk to aliens or at least attempt to. But it's not a strictly theoretical sci-fi question. Humans are in fact listening and actively trying to make contact with any intelligent life in the universe today. But some say we'd be better to leave well enough alone and keep mum rather than call in the mother ship. Debating the merits of saying hello or Nanu Nanu to our celestial neighbours first up today. Then to the Middle East where believe it or not, some are welcoming President-elect Donald Trump.

SOUNDCLIP

This part of the world is really tired with the strife and the problems with ISIS. And there is a lot of hope that Trump will have a stronger hand.

DM: The Middle East is a house of cards on a good day, so what will it mean to introduce a Trump card to the mix? We'll hear from the optimists and the pessimists in half an hour. Plus, legal pot is just around the corner. We're asking what that might mean for teens and their developing brains.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I think the older community thinks it's going to wreck our brains. So far I'm doing well.

VOICE 2: How much do you smoke?

VOICE 1: Every day.

VOICE 2: You smoke every day and you don't think it's going to hurt your brain in the long run.

VOICE 1: Not really.

DM: That story in an hour. I'm Duncan McCue and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

If there are aliens, how can we communicate?

Guests: Jessica Coon, Douglas Vakoch

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Eight hours after landing, there’s still no signs of first contact. The objects measure at least 1,500 feet tall.

VOICE 2: Mama, what’s going to happen?

VOICE 3: I don’t know.

DM: That's from the trailer to a new movie in the theatres called Arrival. It tells the story of an alien arrival here on Earth. Massive alien pods have landed and a linguist, played by Amy Adams, is tasked with trying to communicate with the beings inside. But of course, the language they use is unlike anything she's seen before.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I know what it is.

VOICE 2: What does it say?

VOICE 1: Offer weapon.

VOICE 2: I don’t need an interpreter to know what this means.

VOICE 1: We don’t know if they understand the difference between a weapon and a tool.

DM: Ooh. Well, Arrival may be a fictional thriller but it does raise some of the same questions actual scientists have been pondering for years. How would we ever communicate with extraterrestrials if they were encountered? And for that matter, whether we should be trying to make contact with them at all? Well, our first guest is a professor of linguistics at McGill University who actually consulted for this movie. Jessica Coon is in our Montreal studio. Hello, Jessica.

JESSICA COON: Hi.

DM: How did you get involved in working with the people making this movie?

JESSICA COON: So originally they contacted my colleague Morgan Sonderegger who is a phonetician. He works on sound systems and he helped them develop some of the alien sounds that you hear in the film. And at some point they wanted to talk to somebody who had done linguistic fieldwork, so somebody who works on under-documented or less studied languages by going to communities where these languages are spoken and working directly with speakers because that's the background that Amy Adams’ character has in the film. And that's what I do in my own research. And so they got in touch with me.

DM: How much did they want to know about you and your life?

JESSICA COON: They wanted to know a lot about me and my life. So the first thing I did for the film was I read different drafts of the screenplay and they asked me to give feedback on all the parts that are related to linguistics to make sure that the linguistics represented in the film is as accurate as possible. You know in the end they said we're not going to do—we're not going to make all of these changes because linguists aren't actually Hollywood's number one audience. But they did a really good job keeping it pretty close. And then I worked a lot with the set design crew. They came to my office. They took pictures of everything. They took all the books off my bookshelves. They asked me to come in and write on the blackboards and to you know draw on the heptapod logogram these alien symbols that Amy Adams’ character is decoding. They asked me to try to decode them to see what that would look like. So that was fun.

DM: And the heptapods, by the way, are the aliens in the movie.

[Crosstalk]

JESSICA COON: Exactly. Yes.

DM: What was it that was so important to the movie makers on consulting a linguist?

JESSICA COON: Well, I mean linguistics is really central in this movie. So Amy Adams’ character, she is a linguist and so the idea is this is why she is the one who is brought in because she has experience trying to understand the grammars of human languages in this case. But I guess this gives her you know a head start working on an alien language.

DM: And I mean linguists are not translators, you know, right. I mean it's more about the theory of why people speak. Correct?

JESSICA COON: Exactly. So linguistics is the scientific study of human language. And so we're interested in what it is that is special about humans that allows us to speak language. What is it that all human languages have in common and what are the ways in which they can differ from one another? Because an important discovery of linguistics is that even though languages sound different from one another and we know that their grammars can be different, there are also certain fundamental principles that all human languages have in common.

DM: So take me through the challenges of this. I mean where would you even start if you suddenly had to figure out how to communicate with aliens?

JESSICA COON: Yeah, it's a great question. So like I said when we're working with human languages, we know that there are certain properties that we can expect to find and certain patterns that we see in human languages. But when it comes to alien languages—this is what makes this film so interesting and thought-provoking—is we have no idea how different an alien communication system could be from ours and how different an alien cognitive system or perceptual system might be. But I think you know the tools that we use in linguistics, in looking for patterns in the grammars and you know eliciting different words or sentences in different contexts, these are exactly the tools that somebody would use when trying to decipher an alien language. And that's what you see represented in the film.

DM: One of the things that Amy Adams’ character does is she says I can't tell you what that language sounds like. They play her a track and she says I can't translate that for you. I have to see the aliens. I have to be there. What would be the most challenging part of trying to communicate with a non-human life form?

JESSICA COON: Yeah, that's right. So she does make the point that she needs to interact with them. So if you just hear a string of sounds, there's no way of knowing you know what is being communicated here? Is something being communicated? So she needs to be able to interact with them, to get them to you know describe certain things that she's pointing at or different concepts to make sure that she understands the context in which the language is being produced.

DM: And the types of breathing you know, whether they have mouths, all that kind of thing is kind of important.

JESSICA COON: Right. Yeah, so she can't make a lot of progress with the spoken language because it doesn't sound anything like human language and these aren't sounds that—

DM: Sounds a bit like a whale in the movie or with all kinds of other weird noises. But then they expressed this kind of written language as well. Can you tell me about that?

JESSICA COON: Yeah. So this plays an important role in the movie. So the spoken language, again she can't reproduce the sounds and so she can't really interact with them. And the spoken language, just like our spoken languages, is constrained by time. You have to say one thing before another thing before another thing, so you have to plan out what you say from beginning to end. And an important difference with this written language, which was what she ends up decoding in the movie, is that it's circular. So you see these beautiful smoky circular symbols that just sort of appear all at once. And so an important piece of the plot is that these don't really have a beginning and an end and that plays a big role in the movie.

DM: Something that looms really large in the movie is the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis. What is that exactly?

JESSICA COON: Right. So this is the hypothesis that the language that we speak constrains or determines our view of reality. And when it comes to human languages, this is shown to be incorrect. So there's no evidence—and people have done scientific studies of this—there's no evidence that speaking a different human language can, in any significant way, alter your view of reality. But you know this is science fiction and an interesting thing about the movie is we're not talking about human language anymore. So yes, it plays a big role in the movie that learning this alien language does something for Amy Adams' cognition, her view of reality.

DM: Is this something—talking to aliens—is this something you've ever thought about before working on this project?

JESSICA COON: No. I had spent zero time thinking about talking to aliens. We have our hands full of human languages.

[Crosstalk]

DM: Because you work with Mayan languages.

JESSICA COON: Exactly. I work on Mayan languages.

DM: And it does make me think, I mean you know in terms of first contact with Indigenous people say, are there any comparisons to be made? Did you draw on that experience?

JESSICA COON: Well, you know certainly the grammars of many languages of the world are very different from grammars of more familiar languages, like English or French or German. But we do have an advantage when we are working on human languages because like I said, even though the grammars may differ from one another and the culture might be different and there are all kinds of challenges that field workers encounter when working in the field, we're still starting with you know some basic humanity in common. So I think I can't really compare my experience to that of Amy Adams’. I definitely had an easier time working on Mayan languages.

DM: Here's the question. Here's the $64,000 question.

JESSICA COON: Okay.

DM: When it comes to talking to aliens, did the movie get it right from a linguist’s perspective?

JESSICA COON: You know I think the movie does a really nice job. There's sort of a montage scene where you see Amy Adams’ and Jeremy Renner's character. They're interacting with the aliens. They're eliciting different words. They're acting out scenarios and getting the aliens to produce the alien language for that. And I think that's exactly what linguistic field workers do and what people would do when trying to decipher an alien language. And the other thing that they do well is Amy Adams’ character really emphasizes over and over again that we can't go straight to this big complicated question. So the military generals are really pressuring her: we need to know right now. Why are they here? What do they want? We need to get to this big question. And she says you know we can't go there. There are too many basics that we don't understand. And that's certainly true in any field work situation. You can't go straight to a big theoretical question without understanding all of the smaller working parts of the grammar. So I think you know the writer of the screenplay, Eric Heisserer, he said at some point we can't go into the details of the language otherwise you would just be watching a TED talk. You wouldn't be watching a movie, right? But they do a nice job of representing some of the basics of how a linguist would go about decoding a language.

DM: Well, and it certainly makes linguists look pretty cool now. So thank you so much for sharing some of your perspective on this, Jessica.

JESSICA COON: Thanks for having me.

DM: Jessica Coon is a professor of linguistics at McGill University. She was in our Montreal studio. Of course if and when we do make contact with alien life, it may not be face to face but over the airwaves.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I got it. I got it. I’m patched in.

[Sound: Static]

VOICE 2: Alright. Let me hear it.

[Sound: Thumping]

VOICE 1: Okay. Point source confirmed. Whatever it is, it ain't local.

VOICE 2: Position?

VOICE 3: Twenty-six light years away.

DM: That's Jodie Foster and her colleagues hearing a signal from space that seemed to be talking right to them in the 1997 movie Contact. Our next guest wants not just to listen for aliens far, far away. He actively wants to reach out to them. Douglas Vakoch is the president of METI International, a non-profit research and educational organization dedicated to well, METI—Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence. He joins us from San Francisco. Hello, Douglas.

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: Hello.

DM: What did you think—doing the work you do—when you saw the linguist in the movie Arrival talking to the aliens face to face?

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: I was just incredibly jealous. I mean the scene that Jessica talked about where Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams are in there, they're engaging, they're trying different things—that's what we use when we're trying to understand language here on Earth. But in the scenario that you raised from the movie Contact, where the civilization is 26 light years away, that doesn't work. You need something that is going to be self-contained. You need to start with the simplest ideas possible. You can't assume that they're going to know English or French or Swahili or any other language like ours. So you've got to try to find a universal language that any civilization is going to know, no matter what their biology or evolution.

DM: There is some debate about whether reaching out to aliens is actually a good idea or not. David Brin is an astrophysicist and science fiction author. You've debated with him before. Here's what he has to say.

SOUNDCLIP

We're finding ourselves like as if we were four year olds just becoming aware. Waking up in the middle of a dark forest, a forest that's quiet—is the right thing to do to listen and learn and look around and try to find out what's going on especially since we're finding out so much so fast? At a time like that, should we just go running through the forests shouting yoo-hoo? I mean perhaps there are aliens out there—older, wiser, more technologically advanced—in which case they're being very quiet and perhaps it's because they know something we don't know.

DM: Shouldn't be shouting yoo-hoo in the forest. What's your reaction to that?

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: Well, my reaction is we are already shouting yoo-hoo. So whether we like it or not, this CBC Radio broadcast is now going out into space at the speed of light and that's the same for other radio and television stations around the world. And so we are making ourselves known to other civilizations. Any civilization just a tiny bit more advanced than we are would be able to pick up these accidental missives that we're sending out.

DM: We’re on the radar.

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: We are on the radar. And so the point of METI is not just to make ourselves known for the first time but to say we want to make contact. You may already know that we're here. As David said, perhaps what they're doing is listening. But you know sometimes we talk about interstellar communication as if we want to join the galactic club. What I find so strange though: no one ever talks about submitting an application or paying our dues. But that's what we're trying to do with METI and maybe it'll be what it takes to elicit a response.

DM: Okay. But shouldn't we be a little bit nervous though? I mean I love watching the alien movies. I'd love to play another clip from a movie you'll probably recognize: Jeff Goldblum's character in Independence Day.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: It's like in chess. First you strategically position your pieces and when the timing's right, you strike. See? They’re positioning themselves all over the world using this one signal to synchronize their efforts. In approximately six hours, the signal’s going to disappear and the countdown’s going to be over.

VOICE 2: And then what?

VOICE 1: Checkmate.

DM: So if we start communicating with them and it looks like you know the aliens don't want to be friendly, what do we do?

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: Well, the reality is if there is a civilization that has the capacity to travel between the stars, there's nothing that we can do. So our best option is to convince them that we're much more interesting as conversational partners than to be obliterated. So you know yes, we should think very carefully about what we want to say. We should be judicious. But you know we have to recognize that we are already making ourselves known. You know that there are a lot of things to be worried about in this world: political strife, environmental degradation. It would be nice to check off the list of worries: alien invasion. But I'm sorry. I can't tell you that we're going to be safer if we don't broadcast additional signals.

DM: How would we actually go about sending a message to aliens? You know, what language do you think we could use if we were doing this from afar?

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: Well, I think we'd use the kind of language that they used in Arrival. You know there's a little toss away scene where Jeremy Renner reports that the aliens know prime numbers. Those are those numbers from Contact that we heard just a few minutes ago.

DM: He goes to math.

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: He goes to math. Two, three, five, seven, 11, 13—these are numbers that cannot be created by nature and so they stand out as something that is potentially universal. But why math? Well, what we have in common with a civilization that's sending us a message or received our message is the technology to transmit. And that means you're an engineer. You've got to know at least something as basic as counting on any world to be an engineer. And so then the challenge is to go from those simple principles like counting and addition and arithmetic and algebra to build up a more complex language and that's where we can begin talking about something really interesting.

DM: METI—

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: I mean with—

DM: Sorry, if I could interrupt. METI is planning to start sending signals in 2018 and there’s a lot of pressure here. And you know you could be sending out the first-ever communication aliens receive from us. What message do you want to send to them?

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: Well, again we are sending messages out already. This conversation that we're having right now is reaching the aliens. What we want to say is something even more intelligible. So something that starts with mathematics, starts to describe something about the composition of our universe, for example, the periodic table of elements. But then move into a description of what we see as uniquely beautiful and the nice thing about mathematics is it lets us describe even something like our sense of aesthetics. So music is highly mathematical. The basic concepts of music can be described in the terms that physicists understand: amplitude and frequency and duration. And so that's the sort of messages that we want to send to complement the existing babble that's going out from television and radio broadcasts already.

DM: What would you like to hear back from them?

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: What I would most want to hear back is something that would challenge my preconceptions. I think that's the real beauty. I think that's the essence of the movie Arrival because what Amy Adams discovers is that by encountering a radically other being, she has to step back and rethink something as fundamental as her sense of time.

DM: She has to rethink humanity in a lot of ways.

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: She has to rethink humanity and so that is, I think, the greatest advantage of this whole project: the fact that as we think about what we would want to say, what our hopes and our fears are, we come to better understand ourselves. So if we went on for decades transmitting and never getting a reply back, I think just shifting our focus to a long-term perspective would be benefit enough.

DM: Last question and very briefly: if you did get a message from an alien, would you want to meet them?

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: Oh, absolutely. I would want to be in Amy Adams’ position. I'd say come here.

DM: Well, thank you so much for sharing your interest and expertise on this.

DOUGLAS VAKOCH: Thanks for having me.

DM: Douglas Vakoch is the president of METI International, a non-profit research and educational organization dedicated to messaging extraterrestrial intelligence. He joined us from San Francisco. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. What do you think? Should we try to talk to aliens? What message would you want to send to them? Let us know. Tweet us @thecurrentCBC, comment on this story on our Facebook page or e-mail us by clicking on contact at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. I do have some news in our ongoing efforts to make CBC Radio accessible to all Canadians. As It Happens is joining The Current in offering text transcripts of our show. The Current has had them available on our website since February and to date they've been viewed more than 100,000 times. If you visit our transcripts today, you'll see a new feature: an embedded audio player that lets you read along as you listen. It's a great tool for anyone hard of hearing or for English language learners. I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

What some in the Arab world are hoping for from a Trump presidency

Guests: Omar Kamel, Bayan Khatib, Hussein Banai

DM: Hi. I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

DM: Still to come, legalized marijuana is on its way next year and one of the big questions looming is what it will mean for Canadian teens. Removing the legal taboo may send the message that pot’s okay but those who study brain development caution that teens need to be careful with THC. More on that and a CBC investigation into the potency of today's pot in half an hour. But first, making the move from Celebrity Apprentice to the Middle East peace process—what could go wrong?

SOUNDCLIP

I am honoured to be in the timeless city of Cairo. I'm grateful for your hospitality and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. And I'm also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country. Assalaamu alaykum.

[Sound: Crowd cheering]

DM: That was the new US President Barack Obama in 2009 delivering his historic new beginning speech in Cairo, Egypt. It called for a better relationship between the United States and the Muslim world, citing shared principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. That was then. Today there's a new US president-elect who campaigned on a promise to ban all Muslims entering the country, although he appears to have softened that stand. He's vowed to bomb the you-know-what out of ISIS and says he wouldn't take nuclear weapons off the table when it comes to fighting them. Suffice it to say, Donald Trump's election has many in the Middle East worried and wary about what it means for the region. We'll hear more about those fears. But it should be noted that not everyone in the Middle East is dismayed by the election result. Omar Kamel is an Egyptian video producer and photographer. He published a piece headlined “I'm Arab and Many of us are Glad that Trump Won.” We reached him in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Hello.

OMAR KAMEL: Hi.

DM: Why are you glad that Trump won?

OMAR KAMEL: Glad was sort of written for effect, more or less. Part of it is none of us really wanted Clinton and the other part of it is that a lot of us feel that with Trump getting elected, the US sort of has to deal with the reality of what it’s actually become.

DM: How do you think American Middle East policies under Donald Trump will be different from the Obama administrations or if Hillary Clinton had been elected?

OMAR KAMEL: Well, that's part of it. Part of it is that we don't really feel that there would be much of a difference. The US already has 600, around 622 military bases around the world in around 38 countries. It's been acting like an empire since it began, essentially. We don't really see that whoever is president affecting foreign policy that much. But what we're hoping is that with Trump as president, other countries around the world would at least be more inclined to be more confrontational with the US about its policies.

DM: We heard President Obama in 2009 calling for a new beginning between the US and the Muslim world. How hopeful were you at that time that he would deliver on that?

OMAR KAMEL: I wasn’t at all hopeful because it’s all the same stuff. Obama speaks very well but it ends up leading to the same result.

DM: What US policies in the Middle East have you found to be most harmful?

OMAR KAMEL: Well, there's the backing of dictators everywhere, essentially. We've got the same problems in Egypt. We’ve got a military regime that is still getting funding and backing from the US no matter what human rights conventions the regime breaks. You've got Saudi Arabia getting armed to the teeth by the US to the tune of around a hundred billion dollars so far. And what are they doing? They’re bombing Yemen.

DM: How concerned are you that things may get worse for the Middle East under a Trump presidency?

OMAR KAMEL: This is part of the point. I don't really think they’re going to get worse. I think it’s pretty much the same game. It’s been the same since JFK. JFK started the special relationship between Israel and the US. And it doesn’t matter who it is.

DM: There are some—many in the Arab world who have been concerned about Trump's rhetoric during the campaign and saying that it was hostile and an ill-informed vision of Islam. Does that not concern you?

OMAR KAMEL: Oh, absolutely. It concerns me only in the sense that—it’s never Trump that’s actually scared me. What I’m scared of are people who support Trump and the fact of the matter is that it's not as if there is a scarcity of these people in the US. The US has been racist. The US has been imperialist. People who were more inclined—I generally think that people were more inclined to vote Clinton instead of Trump are far more concerned with internal policy than they are with foreign policy. If I was living in the US or—for the people that I know and care about in the US—I think a Clinton presidency would be better. However, as somebody living outside the US, like I said to a friend of mine a few days ago, no matter what mask they wear, we still get bombed.

DM: So what do you think a Trump presidency will bring to light then about the US relationship with the Middle East and the Muslim world?

OMAR KAMEL: For me, the only real possible benefit of a Trump presidency is that at least things are going to be laid bare, which is going to mean two things for me: that there's a little bit of [inaudible] so-called liberal democrats in the US are going to actually have to deal with you know the monster in the room—I would call it an elephant. And the other possibility is that other countries around the world who are much less likely to be confrontational to somebody like Obama might—given the face that America is now going to be publicly wearing—they might be more likely to be more confrontational with the US in terms of foreign policy.

DM: Okay. Well, thank you very much for joining us today.

OMAR KAMEL: Sure.

DM: Omar Kamel is an Egyptian videographer and photographer. He was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. My next guests don't share the same perspective about the Trump presidency. Hussein Banai is an assistant professor of international studies at Indiana University. He's in Indianapolis, Indiana. And Bayan Khatib is the co-founder of the Syrian Canadian Foundation, an organization that's supporting the successful integration of Syrian newcomers resettled to the Toronto area. She's in Mississauga, Ontario. Hello to both of you.

BAYAN KHATIB: Hello.

HUSSEIN BANAI: Hello.

DM: Bayan Khatib, let me start with you. What was your reaction when you heard that Donald Trump is going to be the next US president?

BAYAN KHATIB: Well, for me, of course I was listening to what Trump has to say on Syria and what I felt is that while Trump’s Syria policy is misguided and ineffective, it's really not so much worse than Obama's. So while Syrians are not happy with the election of Trump, it's not like we're sad to see Obama leave.

DM: Not worse than Obama's in what way?

BAYAN KHATIB: Well, when I say that that Trump's policy on Syria is misguided, I say that primarily because all he says he wants to do on Syria is to work with Russia and the Assad regime to fight ISIS in Syria. And this is problematic for several reasons: one because he seems to completely dismiss the catastrophic humanitarian crisis and two because he's stating that he wants to work with Russia and Assad to fight ISIS and that suggests that Russia and Assad are indeed fighting ISIS. And it has been clearly established that Assad and Russia are primarily—and by primarily I mean something like 90 per cent—targeting civilians, hospitals, schools and killing thousands of civilians every single month and consistently adding to the enormous refugee crisis by forcing people to flee their homes.

DM: Hussein Banai, we still don't know very much about the specifics of what President-elect Trump's policies are going to be. What are your concerns right now?

HUSSEIN BANAI: Well, precisely that. I think if we track his various positions and the mutations of his commentary on various issues in the Middle East, there's very little consistency and coherence over time. We actually don't know what exactly he believes in the case of Syria let's say or with respect to the Iran deal because as a very public private citizen, he has often aired very contradictory and evolving viewpoints on this. What we can tell and I think in terms of what disturbs me most about his election is that the cohort of advisers around him have very hard-line viewpoints on an array of national security issues with respect to the Middle East, on Syria, on Iran. His appointed National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn has expressed fairly Islamophobic views on about 1.5 billion inhabitants of the planet. So the number one problem is that we don't know exactly what he believes. He's been on many different sides of any given issue. The second is that when it comes to presidential temperament, judgment and instincts, the last 17 months of the campaign or the duration of the campaign ought to disturb anyone thinking about the possibility of President Trump confronting a kind of contingent, unforeseen world events which ultimately are what shapes any presidential legacy. There are issues that come up that are unique to that president that oftentimes defined their legacy but also their approach to world affairs. And given how he's behaved during the course of the campaign in erratic, rash, always putting his interests and his depictions in the media before any kind of sensible rational dialogue let alone a course of action, worries me a great deal.

DM: Bayan Khatib, you've expressed concerns that the humanitarian crisis in Syria might be ignored or put to the wayside. What has the Syrian community in Toronto been saying about the effect of a Trump presidency could have on Syria?

BAYAN KHATIB: Well, from what I see, Trump not only wants to ban Muslims from coming into the country but he's also said that he doesn't want any refugees coming into America either. And in fact, you know at some points like who knows with him what's going to stick? But at some points he even said he wants to send the refugees who are already there back which is absolutely insane. And I personally have friends who are Syrian refugees in America who are scared because you never know with him. Like the impossible always seems to actually become possible with Trump like that's his whole election.

DM: What about reactions—I assume you have friends in Syria as well—what kind of reactions are they having to Trump’s election?

BAYAN KHATIB: Well, just a couple of days ago actually, I asked a friend of mine who is one of the last standing doctors in besieged Aleppo how he feels about Trump's election and he said nothing. He feels nothing. So what I understood from what he said is that they're too busy being bombed by every weapon known to man to have any feelings about what's going on with American presidency. And honestly I think that Syrians are just so disappointed and they probably feel that they're going from one American president who doesn't care about them to another American president who doesn't care about them.

DM: Hussein Banai, what about you? What are the various ways that Trump's presidency is being received by Iranians both in Iran and in the diaspora?

HUSSEIN BANAI: Well, it was interesting that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei in a very public way almost praised Trump during the campaign for speaking the truth about the various degradations of American society but also their ill-conceived steps when it came to foreign policy. But then he sort of stopped short of that. If you look at the Iranian political spectrum, it's very clear that hardliners have almost welcomed his election as a sign that this is the real true face of America and he's blunt about it. President-elect Trump is. But beneath that, one can very easily detect a great deal of nervousness about what the place of the nuclear deal with Iran, which all different factions supported in Iran will be under President Trump given that he said he will smash into pieces the nuclear deal within the first 100 days of his presidency.

DM: And there are some people in the Iranian diaspora who are cheering for a Trump presidency because they think you know his administration will take a tougher stance against the Iranian government. What do you think of that?

HUSSEIN BANAI: Well, I think that's a huge misstep. I think to think that first of all, a person again whose positions have been all over the place will have a coherent policy on Iran and that that policy will be strictly aimed at weakening the regime in Iran is ill-conceived, for the simple fact that if you look at who was emboldened by his election and whose interests will be consolidated over the long term, it's very clear that the regime actually benefits from this adversarial stance broadcast out of the United States. And on the other side of this, I think life will become that much harder for Iranian citizens who travel between countries like Canada and the United States and Iran when it comes to getting visas, when it comes to sending money and provisions for family members inside Iran. Iran's markets are likely to be that much more in the grips of some of the hard-line elements inside the regime like the Revolutionary Guards. So the beneficiaries of this line of foreign policy thinking will no doubt be the hardliners and any change that might come about will no doubt come at tremendous cost to ordinary Iranian citizens.

DM: There are some in the Arab world who are saying that they're actually glad Trump won because it exposes the US. It puts a clearer spotlight on US policy in the Middle East. Bayan Khatib, what do you think of that?

BAYAN KHATIB: I can see where they're coming from in stating that because you know Trump is kind of out in the open about everything. But at the end of the day, I think for most of us it's pretty much the same problematic policies and especially in terms of Syria, not much is going to change and there's really no hope in America doing very much for—any more for the humanitarian crisis or to stop the war crimes happening there.

AMT: Hussein Banai, what about you? What do you think of this view that you know it's exposing the US policy in the Arab world to have President-elect Trump at the helm?

HUSSEIN BANAI: Well, I don't buy that at all because the policy is very-well exposed already. I mean in many respects, the critics themselves are revealing the poverty behind that notion because they're saying look, the US foreign policy for a very long time has been detrimental to the interest of ordinary citizens in the Middle East. Well, if that's been that exposed then what is he going to do precisely to make it even more exposed? So I don't buy that premise at all. Again, I think for me the most distressing thing is that if we look at his judgment, if we look at his temperament, if we look at his instincts, those are factors that every president shapes his or her legacy ultimately with. And in the case of Trump, we have a complete departure from not just President Obama but from a traditional bipartisan American foreign policy toward the rest of the world. And this kind of norm breaking that Trump has become almost admired for within the extreme wing of the Republican Party, comes with some fairly substantial extreme foreign policy initiatives and viewpoints that are bound to wreak havoc in the region and even beyond.

DM: How effective do you think he can be fighting ISIS and other Islamic extremists? Hussein Banai, let me start with you.

HUSSEIN BANAI: I don't know how effective he will be. He at some point was in favour of positioning 30,000 US troops to fight ISIS either in Iraq or in Syria. He's backtracked since and said that we have to work with Russia and make the Saudis pay for it. It's very clear that his election has also been welcomed by extremists and by jihadists the world over. I genuinely worry about the reaction that he will have to a first minor or even major terrorist attack. And know that I think in terms of his strategy, if you look at what Michael Flynn—again his national security adviser to be—and some of the national security advisers around him suggests that on the record on ISIS, it's clear that he has at his ultimate goal the restoration of American resolve and strength and preferably his persona. So I think you know if there is an attack, we are bound to see a very harsh, very militaristic response. In terms of his domestic policies, I think we're likely to see a much more muscular Bush-era surveillance and domestic national security strategy policies from him.

DM: Bayan, he's also spoken about disengaging with the region. I mean you both talked about how he said many different things. I'm curious. I mean what do you think about how he will approach fighting ISIS and extremism?

BAYAN KHATIB: Well, disengaging with the region does not go with his you know famous motto that he wants to make America great again, which would entail you know making America important in the international community once again and truly being a promoter of democracy and freedom. So I would say that you know in order to do that, Trump would have to recognize that the Syrian people do not want to be ruled by the Assad dictatorship nor by ISIS and that they want to live in freedom and democracy and that they deserve the support of the international community and a great America, if that’s in fact what he is striving towards.

DM: And Hussein Banai, last question for you: you've expressed many concerns but is there any silver lining to this from your perspective?

HUSSEIN BANAI: Well, I think the silver lining would be that there is now—as United States and the leader of this so-called Western world—a person who has a very extreme set of views. The hope would be that perhaps the region in the Middle East, many of the leaders start to get their affairs in order to form alliances that are long overdue to take care of some of their domestic problems that for too long they have used as a bait to get more military and economic aid from the United States and other Western countries. Perhaps this will force those countries—having this transactional type of president in office—to start to look after their own interests more concretely in the region.

DM: Well, thank you both for sharing your thoughts with us today on this.

HUSSEIN BANAI: Appreciate it. Thank you.

BAYAN KHATIB: Thank you.

DM: Hussein Banai is an assistant professor of international studies at Indiana University. He was in Indianapolis, Indiana and Bayan Khatib is the co-founder of the Syrian Canadian Foundation. She was in Mississauga.

[Music: Bridge]

DM: Okay. Well, we have a minute to get to some of your mail. Yesterday on the program, Anna Maria tackled the thorny issue of so-called difficult names and what it means when no one can get your name right. One of the people she spoke with was Shekhar Paleja, an actor and writer in Vancouver.

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People had a tough time pronouncing my name all the time and I moved to Canada when I was eight. There was a healthy amount of racism where I grew up in Alberta in the eighties. You know I was beat up and I was sort of made fun of. I was mocked. And as much as I fought back, being shamed like that just messes you up in sort of insidious ways.

DM: That was Shekhar Paleja, an actor and writer talking about the difficulties he faced, thanks in part to having a so-called difficult name. Well, we guessed that segment might strike a chord with listeners but wow, we were deluged with your emails. Here's just a small sample. Pam Walker of Campbell River, BC writes: “Back in the early eighties, I was a young woman working in a large office building in Vancouver. One of my co-workers was a young man from Poland whose name was pronounced Yadik, but the spelling was J-A-R-E-K. One of our supervisors always called him Yarek. I remember feeling so offended on his behalf. It felt so terribly disrespectful. Perhaps the worst part of it was is that I don't think she meant any disrespect. I think she was oblivious to how offensive and insensitive it was. Benny Quay from Guelph, Ontario wrote in to say: “In my second year at the University of Victoria, I became proud of my identity and decided to use my Chinese name—Hock Lye. That was in 1970. The hit movie that year was MASH. People would call me Hawk Eye. I had to revert to my Christian name, Benny.” Thank you, Hock Lye, for your email and to everyone else who wrote. If you've got something you'd like to add to this or anything else you've heard on the program, we'd love to hear it. You can find us on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC, on Facebook at CBC Radio: The Current or through our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. Coming up.

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[Sound: Egg cracked into hot pan]

This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?

[Music: Sting]

DM: There are plenty of questions about what the arrival of legalized marijuana could mean for the developing brains of Canadian teens. That's in our next half hour. I'm Duncan McCue and you're listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

How changes in today's marijuana make it more addictive

Guests: Josie, Steven Laviolette, Sharon Cirone

DM: Hi. I'm Duncan McCue and this is the Friday edition of The Current.

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We believe in legalization and regulation of marijuana because it protects our kids and keeps money out of the pockets of criminal organizations and street gangs.

DM: From last April 20^th, a.k.a. 4/20—the day many marijuana enthusiasts gathered to celebrate pot—that was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons reiterating the Liberal government's promise to legalize it. And in less than a year, legal pot should be a reality in Canada. Just what that will mean for kids and teens especially is still a bit hazy because you've likely heard it said that today's pot is stronger than it was in the past. It may surprise you to learn just how much. CBC's Marketplace decided to investigate the matter and undercover, they gathered and tested 12 of the most popular strains from marijuana dispensaries in Toronto. It found THC levels were as much as six times higher than the pot of the 1980s—THC being the component responsible for most of the psychological effects of pot. And as the government prepares to legalize marijuana this spring, researchers also say there's a lot left to learn about marijuana's effects, particularly on younger developing brains. Josie is 24 years old and we've agreed only to use her first name. She started smoking pot when she was a teenager. She's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

JOSIE: Hello.

DM: When did you first start smoking pot?

JOSIE: Probably last week of grade nine. I was vehemently always saying like oh, I'm not going to smoke pot, I'm not going to smoke pot. And yeah, I kind of remember having a “Screw it” moment that last week at grade nine and thinking like oh, I’ll try it. And I don't remember how it happened, but by the 10th grade I was a full-fledged pothead.

DM: How quickly did it become a regular?

JOSIE: It became so quickly I don't remember it happening.

DM: And so when you say regular pothead, what did that mean? How often did you smoke?

JOSIE: Oh, every day. Every day. You know it was something to look forward to at lunch break. It became a community thing almost, like it didn't matter if you were rich or poor. If you had zigzags, you know you were bringing you know that community together and it did serve us as a community pretty well for bringing us together.

DM: So when you smoked up, what kind of effect did it have on you?

JOSIE: At first I just sort of noticed that you know I was really tired and not ambitious, not following through with my priorities, things like that. But then I found that I found more negative consequences like paranoid thinking and eventually that became what I recognized as psychosis for me.

DM: Paranoid thinking. So what do you mean by that?

JOSIE: So we're all a little anxious, a little self-conscious here and there. But this is taking it to the point where it's unhealthy, so paranoid thoughts, thinking that people are out to get you and then to the point of psychosis, maybe even thinking that people can hear your thoughts or you can hear other people's thoughts. It’s actually been such a long time that I feel like perhaps I can't even explain the psychosis in a respectful way, actually.

DM: And so hearing other people's thoughts, were you hearing voices?

JOSIE: A little bit. Yeah, I was.

DM: And that would happen in school.

JOSIE: Yeah. Yeah. It was happening in school for a little bit. I also would say that like I have a family history of mental illness as well, including things like schizophrenia. So I saw one of my uncles go through a schizophrenic episode, a fairly serious one. So when I saw myself experiencing psychosis, I kind of saw similar symptoms. So that's when red lights started going off for me. And I thought you know if this is in my family history, you know I should really keep a tab on this. Like people with schizophrenia, you might start to see symptoms come out like in these teenage years, right? You know smoking pot at this age, you don't know if it's a chicken or an egg, right? So is marijuana exacerbating previous underlying mental health issues that might be in my gene pool already or is the marijuana itself causing this psychosis? And I can't say for sure and I haven't heard any sort of confirmation from any doctor that, like which comes first. But it is a slippery slope.

DM: And so amongst—you said there was a community of pot smokers at your school.

JOSIE: For sure.

DM: Were there other kids that were experiencing any sort of impacts?

JOSIE: Not that I know of but I do have a lot of close friends who have said hey, I was smoking pot. I was smoking pot regularly and I found that it was making me too self-conscious. It was making me too anxious. I didn't like how I felt. And they just stopped. They didn't have a lot of issues stopping marijuana. It was a non-issue for them. And I'm really happy for them that they've been able to stop. My personal experience is that I have a harder time stopping.

DM: So as you were increasing in your pot use and you're going through depression and getting sleepy and then some of this paranoia, what happened to you then?

JOSIE: I thought it would be best if I sought professional help. The level of my depression was getting so severe I was thinking about taking my own life. So the combination of the psychosis and eventually like my mood getting so dampened to the point where like my quality of life was so poor, I asked my mom to take me to the hospital.

DM: And how was it being in the hospital? What did the doctor say?

JOSIE: I downplayed my pot use when I was in the hospital because you know I didn't want my mom to know. Yeah. So I think that's an issue because I think there's almost sometimes a demonization of marijuana that happens in our culture. You know it's a drug, don't do it. You know like I felt like if I were to talk to my mother, it would be a very black and white subject: just don't do it.

DM: So you were in hospital for a couple of months.

JOSIE: Yeah. That first stint, yes.

DM: When you got out, did you start smoking pot again?

JOSIE: Yeah. Yeah. I was like oh, I feel great. Can’t wait to smoke a joint.

DM: Why?

JOSIE: I don't know. I think for me personally—like this is not everyone's experience—but for me I smoke pot a little compulsively, like you know? Like it's very hard for me to see it and not want to smoke it. But that's my experience and I don't want to help demonize marijuana. I don't want people to hear this and be like look, I told you not to smoke pot. You're going to get schizophrenic. You're going to end up in the hospital. That's not true. But I also don't think it's healthy if there's this polarity between pot being not good and then I also felt like I experienced this culture where pot can do no wrong. You know? Where like in my community, it's like don't worry about pot. It's not even a thing. There's bigger fish to fry.

DM: But you do have some worries. I mean you feel like you're addicted.

JOSIE: I do. Yeah, I do. I would like people to recognize that it can be habit-forming and it can be addictive and that there's help for people who do feel like they have a dependency to marijuana because I know before I realized that there was help, I felt like you know what's wrong with me? Why can't I quit smoking pot? It's a non-addictive drug. And you know my friends who don't want to smoke any more just up and quit. Why can't I.

DM: Over the course of time, you ended up back in hospital again, right?

JOSIE: I did. Yeah. Usually for depression-related things.

DM: And did you seek any treatment for the marijuana addiction?

JOSIE: I did. I was the only person in the treatment centre who was there for a marijuana addiction.

DM: And what was that like?

JOSIE: It was a little bit embarrassing, I suppose, because I was receiving treatment with people who were dealing with severe withdrawal symptoms from the drugs that they take and where mine, like the withdrawal symptoms aren’t very heavy. But a drug is a drug kind of. So if I have this dependency to something that alters my mood and I'm smoking it compulsively and it's affecting the quality of my life and I can't stop, like I needed some help, I often say that it kind of feels like I'm living my life with one hand tied behind my back. You know I'm quite ambitious most of the time. So I often feel like I'm sabotaging myself when I smoke marijuana because there goes my motivation. There goes my energy, out the window. You know like I'm only half achieving what I think is my potential.

DM: So how is it affecting your life today then? You're still smoking.

JOSIE: I am still smoking. You know I have a romantic partner and he's quit smoking marijuana. I think he started smoking more marijuana to get close to me. He saw that I like to smoke a lot of pot and I think you know he would smoke a joint with me here and there to get closer to me and then he realized like that it was having negative effects on him and his mental health. So he was able to quit. And then we both acknowledged that it was having negative effects on our relationship and he's asked me not to smoke marijuana in front of him and also not to engage with him if I'm high. So if I’ve smoked, he asked that I wait till I've burnt out before I see him face to face and I don't smoke when I see him. But like that's not fair for my partner to schedule our relationship around my addiction you know. And I'd like to let him know that you know marijuana is not more valuable to me than he is, but it is an issue for me and it's not as easy for me to just quit.

DM: Do you still experience the paranoia at all?

JOSIE: Self-consciousness, for sure. You know like I'm a really outgoing person. When I'm on the streetcar and I'm sober, you know if someone won't move out of the way for an elderly person who wants a seat, I'm the first person to be like hey man, what are you doing? Move out the way. And I'm dancing and I'm complimenting people and I'm listening to my music and bobbing my head. As soon as I smoke a joint, I don't know what to do with my hands. I don't know what to do with my eyes. I'm super self-conscious. I almost feel crippled because I'm so hyper aware of things that I shouldn't be.

DM: But you are working now.

JOSIE: Oh yes. And that helps a lot. I don't feel safe if I were to smoke marijuana before work. I wouldn't do that to my employer. I wouldn't do that to myself. It's not safe for the line of work that I do. And I'm really happy that I have that allotted time during the week when I'm sober and then I smoke when I go home.

DM: And last question for you, Josie. We are talking about legalizing marijuana in this country. How do you feel about that?

JOSIE: I feel like it would help diminish the polarity between pot being a non-issue and pot being a drug. So in the culture that I experience where marijuana is a non-issue, don't worry about it, it's hardly a drug, things like that. You know kids don't really get to openly communicate like hey, like this isn't for me. You know I feel with alcohol because it was normalized in our society, I was able to say like you know I can have a beer once in a while but you know it's not quite for me and I felt like I had the elbow room to do that. But when it's sort of this underground culture of people smoking pot illegally and things like that, it becomes an isolated community. Also, I'm not sure what was in the pot that I was smoking when I was in high school because I was buying pot off of anybody who would sell it to me. You know I'm 14, you know there's no regulation of the marijuana. So I'm hoping that with regulation of marijuana, people would feel safe to smoke what they're smoking.

DM: Josie, thanks for coming in and good luck.

JOSIE: Yeah. Thank you very much.

DM: Josie is 24 years old. She started smoking pot as a teenager and she lives in Toronto. Josie mentioned she didn't know what exactly was in the pot she smoked and that is one of the questions CBC TV’s Marketplace investigated. They bought 12 samples of marijuana from seven dispensaries in Toronto and sent them to a lab to be analyzed and the results were significant, as much for what they didn't find in the samples as for what they did. Watch Marketplace tonight for the detailed results. For some context, I'm joined by Steven Laviolette, who is an associate professor with the Schulich School of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario who studies addiction and schizophrenia. He's in London, Ontario. Hello.

STEVEN LAVIOLETTE: Hello. How are you?

DM: We'll be clear that you didn't do the lab testing for Marketplace, but help us understand what they found. First, the average level of THC was 20 per cent, with one sample having 30 per cent THC. What does that mean?

STEVEN LAVIOLETTE: Well, what they were really focusing on was examining the discrepancy between advertised levels of THC in marijuana that is dispensed from medical dispensaries versus what the consumers are actually getting. And this is a major issue because as you were mentioning in the previous segment, is the THC, which is the psychoactive compound in cannabis which is believed to cause a lot of the negative psychiatric effects associated with it.

DM: They also found zero amount of CBD in any of the samples. What does that mean?

STEVEN LAVIOLETTE: Well, this is another aspect of the research we're doing. So CBD, in some strains is normally the largest phytochemical compounds in cannabis plants. And the interesting thing about CBD and what we've been finding is that it actually produces the exact opposite effect of THC. So not only can it block the effects of THC, the level of receptors in your brain, it produces the exact opposite effects on sort of the psychiatric side effects associated with THC. So it's a very important mitigating factor in cannabis that can downplay some of the potential negative effects that are associated with THC.

DM: So the CBD balances off the psychoactive component of the THC. How surprising are these results that there wasn't much or any CBD in the pot?

STEVEN LAVIOLETTE: I was very surprised myself. Now I don't have the details as to what exactly these dispensaries were advertising, but strains of marijuana that were common in the sixties and seventies had much higher levels of CBD. Often times the levels of CBD were sort of on par with the levels of THC and given what we know about how these two chemicals counteract each other, the fact that these particular samples had no CBD whatsoever, what it suggests is that the THC is essentially unchecked. And that it can be producing effects on the brain in such as schizophrenia-like symptomology that would have no natural counterbalance in the drug that's being exposed to the individual.

DM: Okay. So now we're up on the chemistry. Tell us what you found in your research on rats and marijuana.

STEVEN LAVIOLETTE: Well, we've been looking at it from two angles. So we've been looking at both the negative and the positive. So we did a series of experiments examining how adolescent exposure to THC in animal models alters schizophrenia-related pathways in the brain. And what we found was really quite surprising even to us. What happened was when the adolescent rats in the study were exposed to THC during that window of you know the analogy of teenage brain development, when we looked at their brains in adulthood, they had a hyperactive dopamine system which is remarkably similar to what you would find in the brain of someone with schizophrenia and what we think is believed to underlie a lot of the psychotic-like symptoms associated with schizophrenia. And more importantly, we saw changes in certain molecular pathways, in areas like the prefrontal cortex which is very important for emotional regulation, emotional control and cognitive function. And these molecular changes were virtually the same as what you would find in the brain of a patient that has schizophrenia. So it was really quite surprising to us the number of similarities both in terms of the behaviour abnormalities and the neuronal and molecular changes that we saw following THC exposure.

DM: We heard Josie talk about psychotic symptoms. How common is that then?

STEVEN LAVIOLETTE: Well, it's not that common. It's important to keep in mind that this is really a small subset of individuals that are going to potentially put themselves at risk if they're exposed to it.

DM: So it’s not reefer madness.

STEVEN LAVIOLETTE: Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So our current understanding is that you have to have certain genetic vulnerabilities before you're more likely to develop these sorts of risk factors. So certain genetic markers often associated with the dopamine system have been seen in individuals that are at greater risk of developing psychosis and schizophrenia following adolescent THC exposure. And not surprisingly, we saw that those same pathways were also affected in our experiments.

DM: So a last question for you: what does this tell you about how marijuana is impacting the teenage brain?

STEVEN LAVIOLETTE: Well, it's something we have to be very cognizant and aware of. And you know I fall back on the report that was released from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and they argue for legalization but with very strict regulation of the amount of THC that's available in strains that are accessible by adolescents and also age restrictions as well. So sort of the side note to the studies we did. The control experiments were adult rats, so we exposed adult brains to the same levels of THC and there were no—none of these side effects were present. So what it suggests, at least from our studies was that adulthood exposure, even to relatively high levels of THC doesn't produce nearly the same sorts of negative effects as it does in the teenage brain. So the teenage brain is particularly vulnerable to the effects of THC.

DM: Thank you for this.

STEVEN LAVIOLETTE: Thank you.

DM: Steven Laviolette is an associate professor with the Schulich School of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. He was in London, Ontario.

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VOICE 1: Weed is a huge part of youth culture, I think, because the people who influence us, like they support it.

VOICE 2: Weed can be used responsibly, like it's all in moderation. But you know if you smoke weed every day, it's definitely not harmless.

VOICE 3: I feel like it really opens your mind to like another world beyond this world, you know? It really helps you see the truth.

VOICE 4: It's natural if you get it from the right place. Like obviously if it's laced, like that sucks.

VOICE 5: Almost everybody in history has tried it.

VOICE 6: Weed to people shouldn't be really a problem unless if you don't like it, then like you just shouldn't do it.

DM: According to my next guest, as the government prepares to legalize marijuana next year, it will have to act carefully to send the right message to young people. Sharon Cirone is a family practice physician at a Toronto hospital. She focuses on addiction medicine and psychotherapy and she's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

SHARON CIRONE: Hello. Good morning.

DM: What do you make of some of those comments that we just heard about what teenagers were saying about marijuana?

SHARON CIRONE: Well, I think we're having an important discourse to talk openly with young people and all parts of society about this is really important. I would add that it's not just the adolescent brain. We have really compelling literature now that suggest that the brain is still under construction until probably age 25. There's a lot of really important changes happening in the brain. A lot of pruning of different parts of the brain and we see that not just at the brain level but at the level of changes, the neurodevelopmental arc of young people as they emerge into adulthood. There's a lot of really, really important tasks that are happening and the precious learning that happens in these stages set us up for a more comfortable life as an adult. So I would suggest to extend this concern into the mid-twenties.

DM: So earlier we heard Josie who was describing her struggle with marijuana addiction and she's actually a patient of yours. How often do you see patients and hear stories like that?

SHARON CIRONE: Very often. So as mentioned by the previous interviewee, the presentation of psychosis related to cannabis is not frequent. Probably where I work at just one hospital in Toronto with a child and adolescent mental health unit, about once a month we see a young person presenting with their first episode of psychosis and related to also marijuana smoking. As a direct causal factor, that's very difficult to put your finger on. We see that less often than we see the large number of kids who have the kind of impacts that Josie was talking about: affecting her sense of self, affecting her mood, affecting her coping strategies for dealing with everyday stress but also anxiety and other experiences. This is really, really common. Very pervasive.

DM: One of the things that struck me about what Josie had to say is that she feels like she's addicted. And you often hear from the pot community that pot is non-addictive. Is pot addictive?

SHARON CIRONE: Well, if I take a step back and if you allow to define addiction as a chronic relapsing and remitting illness and recognize that there are parameters of illness that would suggest addiction along the continuum—so if someone has developed a tolerance to a substance so they're using more of the same substance to get the same effect or if they're regular, very regular or daily smokers and they abruptly stop and they notice some changes, some physiologic changes that we associate with withdrawal, so irritability and other difficulty sleeping, difficulty with appetite—absolutely people experience this. It is a myth that marijuana is not addictive.

DM: But on the spectrum of addictive substances, is it less harmful than alcohol or cigarettes or is it the same?

SHARON CIRONE: Molecule for molecule, I'd say that we have—especially in this present day—other substances to be terribly worried about. Certainly opioids are high on our list. Tobacco, nicotine is the one that kills people. These are very serious issues. Alcohol has a lot associated medical and societal and family effects that are very serious to take into consideration. The one group that I have serious concern for when it comes to marijuana is the young brain. It's a brain, as I say, that's still under construction and there is many, many important steps that are happening in the arc of development that marijuana can have a serious impact on. And I see it every day in my practice.

DM: So I'm imagining that there are some parents right now who are getting a little worried listening to you. And so, if kids only smoke it occasionally, say at a party every once in a while, is that different than comparing to smoking it every day?

SHARON CIRONE: Most certainly. Anything that's done with regularity that has us avoid our internal experiences. Many kids find themselves that are smoking daily, they initiate for recreational reasons. It's fun, it's sociable, it's what the other kids are doing and over time they start to have these realizations like Josie described. Ah, look at this. This allows me to eat. I have a better appetite. Hmm. I'm feeling uncomfortable. I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling mad. I'm feeling nervous. Hmm. Let's have a joint. Let's smoke. And then over time they start to realize oh wow, I think I need this to fall asleep. Hmm. I haven't figured out how to cope with disappointment or anger or jealousy without smoking a joint. This is distressing. We were designed to fall asleep without a chemical, to eat without a chemical.

DM: Do you think kids understand this? Teenagers understand this?

SHARON CIRONE: Well, we all live in a society, as do teenagers, of immediate gratification, of trying to avoid any distress at all, of trying to turn anything around that's uncomfortable. Learning distressed tolerance is a really important human task and we learn it primarily in our young years.

DM: Josie talked about how difficult it was when she first went to the hospital to admit how much pot she was smoking because she felt uncomfortable talking about it. So can you give us some suggestions on you know what is the best way to talk to teenagers about marijuana use?

SHARON CIRONE: Well, I approach it—whether it's with the patients that I work with in my practice, my own kids or my kids’ friends, my nieces and nephews—I try to approach it with an open non-judgmental conversation, engage them in the conversation, acknowledge that they have insight, they have experience and certainly not to approach it with a “just say no” approach. Find out what it is they're getting out of it. Why did they engage in this activity? What are the pros for it? What have they started to notice is not working for them? Let them know that they deserve to feel comfortable engaging in their life to eat, to sleep, to play with their friends, to feel down, to feel up without requiring a chemical. And that if sometimes they engage in activities that are for recreational purposes but they're not relying on the daily vicissitudes of life to get through with a chemical, that's a very different thing than regular use and self-medicating.

DM: And a last word for you: do you support legalizing marijuana?

SHARON CIRONE: Yeah. I say that that train’s already left the station. The government's already made that decision. There's a task force already looking at this. What I support is that we look very, very carefully at what is going to be the minimum age of access to marijuana if it's legalized. In all of the jurisdictions in the United States, they've identified the age of 21. If we were looking at just being good to the brain, would use the age of 25. We need to make sure, however, that young kids are not sitting in jail or burdened in the court system because they have possessed a small amount of marijuana. I suggest that under whatever legal age we decide for the legalization of marijuana, is that it be decriminalized for the kids who possess it at a younger age that they not be brought into the legal system, that they have conversations with their friends, their family, other supports in their system and sometimes with providers such as myself around their use.

DM: Thanks so much for joining us.

SHARON CIRONE: Thank you.

DM: Sharon Cirone is a family practice physician at a Toronto hospital who focuses on addiction medicine and psychotherapy and she was with me in Toronto. For more on this story, tune into CBC Television tonight at eight for the results of the Marketplace story. And that is our program for today.

[Music: Ending theme]

DM: Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Tom Power speaks with director Kenneth Lonergan about his new film, Manchester by the Sea. And I'd like to pass on some news about our ongoing efforts to make CBC Radio accessible to all Canadians. As It Happens is joining The Current in offering text transcripts of our show. We've had them available on our website since February. Lots of people are looking at them. You can see a new embedded audio player there that lets you read along as you listen. It's a great tool for those who are hard of hearing or for English language learners. I’m Duncan McCue. Chi-miigwech. Thanks for listening to the Friday edition of The Current.

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November 25, 2016 full episode transcript

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