The Legal Canadian Cannabis Market at Five – What Have We Learned?
As legal Canadian cannabis market turns five years old this week, it’s a good time to reflect on what’s changed. The Canadian medical profession has been among the most vocal. Two studies, one in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) and one in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), are still preaching caution as they’ve done from the beginning.
The main focus of both articles is that emergency department visits and hospitalizations have gone up since legalization. The JAMA study, Changes in Cannabis-Attributable Hospitalizations Following Nonmedical Cannabis Legalization in Canada, found that hospitalizations went up since legalization. The study made a convincing argument that this rise wasn’t linked to legalization itself but to commercialization.
However, it couldn’t firmly conclude why. The authors recognized that there were limitations to its findings. For one, the COVID pandemic complicated things – substance use including cannabis and alcohol are known to have increased during that period. The short time frame of the study was another factor.
So too was the fact that legalization may affect whether or not a person seeks medical help.
“Greater… willingness of patients to disclose cannabis use after legalization could contribute to observed increases,” the authors wrote. Then, they dismissed that idea in this case. “However, this bias is unlikely to be responsible for changes observed in the study (e.g., initial decline [after legalization and before commercialization came into force] followed by an increase [after commercialization]).”
We would argue that this still holds true – someone who purchased from the legal Canadian cannabis market could conceivably be more likely to seek medical attention than someone who purchased illegally. This would still explain why the numbers align with commercialization.
Legal Canadian Cannabis Market Has Clear Social Justice Benefits, Even If Health Benefits Are Murky – LPC
It should also be noted that this study did not measure anything such as reduced stress due to cannabis use, reduced pain, or reduce opioid use. Any report should probably consider these areas among others before making blanket statements about cannabis health benefits.
In any case, the study concludes that although more research is needed, the findings show that society should at least be cautious.
“Ongoing surveillance efforts are needed, but restrictions on product type and store access may be reasonably precautionary measures for jurisdictions consideration legalization,” the JAMA study stated.
Similarly, the CMAJ report, Outcomes associated with nonmedical cannabis legalization policy in Canada: taking stock at the 5-year mark, found reasons to be cautious on the medical front. However, it did note social improvements likely due in part to reduced cannabis stigma.
“A consideration of the evidence 5 years after implementation suggests that success in meeting policy objectives has been mixed, with social justice benefits appearing to be more tangibly substantive than health benefits,” the authors wrote.
It too called for more cannabis research and spoke to the difficulties in measuring health data across provinces when trying to gauge the relative benefit and harm after the legal Canadian cannabis market opened up.
“Robust ways to integrate diverse data when evaluating policy outcomes are also needed to inform evidence-based adjustments to regulatory parameters that may be necessary to more effectively serve and achieve the declared public health objectives of cannabis legalization in Canada going forward.”
The Bottom Line on Cannabis Legalization and Commercialization – LPC
So what is the average consumer to make of all of this? The most obvious is that recreational cannabis is non-medical, so its health benefits are not really at issue. Health risks should be studied, yes. But people are not dying like they are with opioids. Social justice benefits have grown. The number of people buying from legal sources has grown. Youth access to cannabis is undetermined – wildly fluctuating data makes it impossible to decide if it’s gone up, down, or remained steady.
We think there is still a lot to celebrate this week. Cannabis is a drug, and like any drug – alcohol, caffeine, Tylenol, or otherwise – certain precautions and certain risks should be expected. Whether the legal Canadian cannabis market has helped improve Canada as a society is one thing. The real question though is, has cannabis legalization helped you?
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