Helping Youth Make Sense of Cannabis

We have all heard a variety of claims about cannabis. Some are scary, like, “cannabis causes psychosis” or “cannabis leads to brain damage and dropping out of school.” Others tell a different story, “cannabis is a miraculous herb that alleviates the symptoms of everything from hiccups to Multiple Sclerosis.”

Making sense of these competing claims can be confusing . While there is at least some truth in almost all of them, accurate and balanced information about cannabis is more complex than simple statements. It is particularly important for young people to realize that there are no simple answers. People are complex beings. Cannabis use can affect  us all differently, but it has potential to impact our minds, bodies, relationships and future prospects.

So where do we begin? We need to acknowledge that all drugs can be both good and bad. Even medications recommended by a doctor can cause harm. Since all drug use carries some risk, it is important to learn how to weigh the potential benefits against the potential risk. Fortunately, human beings have been doing this for a long time. And the wisdom of the ages might be summed up as, “not too much, not too often, and only in safe contexts.” Using more of a drug (or a higher strength preparation) or using daily as opposed to once in a while is more dangerous. But risk is also linked to a wide range of contextual factors. Age – the younger a person is when they start using cannabis regularly, the more likely they are to experience harms in the short term or later in life. But other factors, like where and with whom one uses, also impact risk. Smoking cannabis on school property or driving under the influence are examples of particularly high-risk contexts for quite different reasons.

The reasons why we might use cannabis are also important, and they influence the balance of risk and benefit. If our use is motivated only by curiosity, for example, our use will likely be only occasional or experimental. On the other hand, if our use is about fitting in with a particular group or a way to cope with anxiety or some other mental health problem, we are more likely to develop a more regular and riskier pattern of use. Yet again, if we are consciously choosing to use cannabis to address troubling symptoms related to various health challenges, we may find it relatively easy to manage our use in a way that minimizes risk.

While it may be helpful to know the various potential risks and benefits associated with cannabis use, the more important issue is to become consciously aware of our own pattern of use and our reasons for using or not using. As human beings, we tend to “outsource” control of our behaviour to the environment. For example, when we are with our friends, we may talk a certain way. But when we are talking with our parents, our teachers, our boss – without thinking about it – we slip into a different way of talking. Drug use is more dangerous when we allow it to become a pattern that we don’t think about.

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Author: Dan Reist, Assistant Director (Knowledge Exchange) at the Centre for Addictions Research of BC

Should the minimum legal drinking age of 19 years old in British Columbia be reduced?

Alcohol use is the largest contributor to injury, disability, and death among adolescents and young adults aged 10-24 years old. As a result, Canada and other countries worldwide have implemented minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) legislation for many decades now, and drinking-age laws are considered a cornerstone of alcohol-control policies designed to reduce harms among young people. In Canada, the minimum legal drinking age is 18 years of age in Alberta, Manitoba, Québec, and 19 years of age in the rest of the country.

No other alcohol policy has generated more research or debate than minimum legal drinking age legislation. Usually the debates about the most appropriate drinking age involve competing views about how society should assign importance to the harms versus the benefits of such legislation. Some people put more emphasis on the importance of individual choice in alcohol consumption, while other people place more value on restricting alcohol consumption in some age groups so as to safeguard young adults and improve overall public health. And so, there is a healthy tension between individual rights and the greater public good underlying debates about the minimum legal drinking age, and where individuals sit on this continuum will often affect how they interpret the scientific findings.

The large majority of the scientific evidence on this topic, however, is consistent and clear: raising the MLDA is associated with reductions in alcohol-related harms (such as motor vehicle collisions, injuries, assaults, and deaths), and lowering the MLDA is associated with increases in alcohol-related harms.

Advocates for lowering the MLDA might argue that most MLDA studies rely on United States’ data from the 1970s and 1980s, and usually have fatal/nonfatal motor vehicle collisions as their most harmful outcomes. And, critics of MLDA legislation might continue, the large MLDA impacts on motor vehicle collisions observed in the 1970s and 1980s might be substantially diminished in the contemporary British Columbia context due, in large part, to advances in both traffic safety and other alcohol policies (e.g., improvements in road safety/motor vehicle safety; introduction of provincial graduated driver licensing legislation; increases in the severity of penalties for drinking and driving).

Could it be that the MLDA has lost much of its effectiveness in reducing alcohol-related harms among young people in British Columbia?

In four recent studies, my colleagues and I have demonstrated that drinking-age legislation continues to have a powerful impact on alcohol-related harms among young people in Canada. Relative to youth slightly younger than the minimum legal drinking age, young adults just older than the MLDA incur immediate and significant increases in a range of serious alcohol-related harms, including: motor vehicle collisions; inpatient/Emergency Department admissions for alcohol-use disorders, attempted suicides, injuries, assaults; and death. An example of our work was published recently in the American Journal of Public Health.

Along with the prior MLDA literature, our Canadian studies provide up-to-date and persuasive evidence that lowering the MLDA will likely result in significant increases in serious alcohol-related harms among young people in British Columbia. Proponents of a lower MLDA in BC will need to make an even more convincing argument that such substantial damages to youth in British Columbia will be outweighed by the benefits of lowering the drinking age in our province.

Authors:

Dr. Russ Callaghan, PhD (Russ.Callaghan@UNBC.ca); Jodi Gatley, BSc (jgatley@gmail.com)

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Jodi Gatley