2023-11-29 07:24:11
Cannabis use was legalized in Canada in October 2018, with the goal of improving cannabis-related public health and safety and reducing youth access and illegal cannabis-related activities. Some health professionals feared that legalization might have harmful effects on public health. If this is not the case, “the evidence remains limited to support the public health benefits of legalization,” summarizes Dr. Benedikt Fischer of Simon Fraser University.
“The legalization of cannabis in Canada does not appear to have been the public health disaster anticipated by some of its opponents, but neither can it be described as an unequivocal public health success.”
Health problems associated with cannabis have not really diminished
Analysis of Canadian medical and hospitalization data indicates that:
- cannabis use disorders, cannabis-related emergency room visits and admissions, and cannabis-related impaired driving have remained at the same level since legalization;
- however, “on the other hand”, most cannabis users now obtain their cannabis from legal rather than illegal sources, and cannabis-related arrests, as well as the personal burdens of stigma and possible prosecutions and records judicial authorities have decreased considerably.
Taken together, these data suggest, according to the authors,
“important benefits in terms of social justice which can also have indirect positive effects on health”.
Researchers are also calling for these societal benefits to be better taken into account in future evaluations of legalization. Ongoing monitoring of cannabis use among adults, youth and those at risk, as well as major health harms, such as cannabis use disorder, cannabis-related injuries, admissions to the hospital or emergency department visits, as well as associated crime and other socioeconomic indicators remains necessary to better clarify the impact, to date mixed, of legalization.
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