Cannabis use and suicidal ideation among youth: Can we democratize school policies using digital citizen science?

BACKGROUND: School policies and programs are important in preventing Cannabis use among youth. This study uses an innovative digital citizen science approach to determine the association between Cannabis use and suicidal ideation among youth while investigating how school health policies mediate this association. METHODS: The study engaged 818 youth (aged 13-18 years) and 27 educators as citizen scientists via their own smartphones. Youths responded to time-triggered validated surveys and ecological momentary assessments to report on a complex set of health behaviours and outcomes. Similarly, educators' reported on substance misuse and mental health school policies and programs. Multivariable logistic regression modeling and mediation analyses were employed. RESULTS: 412 youth provided data on substance misuse and suicidal ideation. Cannabis use and other factors such as bullying, other illicit drug use, and youth who identified as females or other gender were associated with increased suicidal ideation. However, school policies and programs for substance misuse prevention did not mediate the association between Cannabis use and suicidal ideation. CONCLUSIONS: In the digital age, it is critical to reimagine the role of schools in health policy interventions. Digital citizen science not only provides an opportunity to democratize school policymaking and implementation processes, but also provides a voice to vulnerable youth.

How will cannabis legalization affect health, safety, and social equity outcomes? It largely depends on the 14 Ps.

Jurisdictions considering or implementing alternatives to cannabis supply prohibition will confront several decisions that will influence health, safety, and social equity outcomes. This essay highlights 14 of these design considerations, which all conveniently begin with the letter P: 1) Production, 2) Profit motive, 3) Power to regulate, 4) Promotion, 5) Prevention and treatment, 6) Policing and enforcement, 7) Penalties, 8) Prior criminal records, 9) Product types, 10) Potency, 11) Purity, 12) Price, 13) Preferences for licenses, and 14) Permanency. For each factor, the paper explains why it is important, describes the various approaches, and highlights how some of the jurisdictions that have legalized have addressed these choices. The primary audiences are decision makers considering alternatives to prohibiting cannabis supply and analysts making projections or conducting evaluations of these changes.

[Monitoring and tackling smoking and other addictions: Current situation and perspectives]. / Lutte contre le tabagisme et autres addictions : état des lieux et perspectives.

After decades of policies targetting illicit drugs, the French drug addiction policy has progressively switched to incorporate a concept of « addictive behavior ¼, including alchol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals and even behaviors such as gambling. Among the French general population, alcohol and tobacco uses are by far the most important health risk factors, with a very high burden of morbidity and mortality. Illicit drugs have very low prevalences except cannabis, with the highest prevalence in Europe, among adults as well as among adolescents. However, actions have long been implemented to tackle illicit drugs uses, in particular intraveinous drug use regarding its role in the HIV infection, with harm reduction tools such as opioids substitution treatments or needle exchange programs. While continuing this harm reduction policy, public authorities have strengthened measures towards alcohol, and moreover towards tobacco use with many legal and public health improvements. The goals are to reduce tobacco visibility (smoking bans in public places and even in pubs and restaurants), tobacco accessibility (price increase, ban on sales to minors…) and also to develop helps for those who wish to quit. The objective is to « denormalize ¼ tobacco until there is a whole tobacco free generation in 2032 in France. One the one hand, this aim does not seem too irrealistic as the last general population survey results show a recent decrease in the tobacco smoking prevalence, as well as a decrease in social inequalities in tobacco use. One the other hand, the implementation of an harm reduction approach for alcohol, tobacco and cannabis remains to build.

Improving police conceptual knowledge of Mexico's law on cannabis possession: Findings from an assessment of a police education program.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Policing practices do not reflect recent decriminalization of drug possession in Mexico. We assessed knowledge of cannabis law as part of a police education program (PEP) post-drug law reform in Tijuana. METHODS: Officers took pre-/post-PEP surveys; random subsample (n = 759) received follow-up assessments. Longitudinal logistic regression (pre-, post-, 3-months post-PEP) measured knowledge of cannabis law. RESULTS: PEP increased conceptual knowledge of cannabis law from baseline to post-training (AOR = 56.1, CI: 41.0-76.8) and 3 months post-PEP (AOR = 11.3, CI: 9.0-14.2). CONCLUSION AND SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE: PEPs improve police knowledge of cannabis law. Reforms should be bundled with PEPs to improve policy implementation. (Am J Addict 2018;XX:XX-XX).

Psychosocial Determinants of Teens' Online Engagement in Drug Prevention Social Media Campaigns: Implications for Public Health Organizations.

Social networking sites (SNSs) now serve as a primary form of communication among adolescents. Consequently, drug prevention campaigns delivered through SNSs have the potential to reach a wide network of adolescents if teens are willing to engage in the message diffusion process by commenting on, "liking," following, creating, or sharing prevention messages with their networked peers. However, little is known about the psychosocial factors that influence adolescents' willingness to participate in drug prevention social media campaigns. We use qualitative methods to explore reasons why adolescents may or may not want to engage in the message diffusion process. We conducted four semi-structured focus groups with a total of 33 high school students from various school- and community-based youth programs in Rhode Island. Focus groups were followed by a brief self-administered questionnaire collecting information about participants' social media use to augment qualitative findings. Overall, findings reveal that engaging teens in the message diffusion process can be advantageous but difficult to accomplish due to multiple factors. Most notably, asking adolescents to participate in drug prevention campaigns delivered through SNSs means also asking youth to violate online norms that promote drug use, which could in turn subject them to peer reprisal. We conclude that future studies should begin to investigate strategies addressing the various challenges we identified. Meanwhile, prevention specialists should consider alternative or supplemental evidence-based approaches to drug prevention rather than invest resources into activities that may offer little return on investment.

Marijuana Regulatory Frameworks in Four US States: An Analysis Against a Public Health Standard.

The movement to legalize and regulate retail marijuana is growing. We examined legislation and regulations in the first 4 states to legalize recreational marijuana (Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska) to analyze whether public health best practices from tobacco and alcohol control to reduce population-level demand were being followed. Only between 34% and 51% of policies followed best practices. Marijuana regulations generally followed US alcohol policy regarding conflict of interest, taxation, education (youth-based and problematic users), warning labels, and research that does not seek to minimize consumption and the associated health effects. Application of US alcohol policies to marijuana has been challenged by some policy actors, notably those advocating public health policies modeled on tobacco control. Reversing past decisions to regulate marijuana modeled on alcohol policies will likely become increasingly difficult once these processes are set in motion and a dominant policy framework and trajectory becomes established. Designing future marijuana legislation to prioritize public health over business would make it easier to implement legalization of recreational marijuana in a way that protects health.

Implementing the teen marijuana check-up in schools-a study protocol.

BACKGROUND: Substance misuse is now encountered in settings beyond addiction specialty care, with schools a point-of-contact for student access to behavioral health services. Marijuana is a leading impetus for adolescent treatment admissions despite declining risk perception, for which the Teen Marijuana Check-Up (TMCU)-a tailored adaptation of motivational enhancement therapy-offers an efficacious service option. To bridge the knowledge gap concerning effective and affordable technical assistance strategies for implementing empirically supported services, the described trial will test such a strategy to facilitate school-based TMCU implementation. METHODS: A type II effectiveness/implementation hybrid trial will test a novel strategy for a TMCU purveyor to provide technical assistance on an 'as-needed' basis when triggered by a fidelity drift alarm bell, compared to resource-intensive 'gold-standard' technical assistance procedures of prior efficacy trials. Trial procedures adhere to the EPIS framework as follows: (1) initial mixed-method exploration of the involved school contexts and identification of TMCU interventionist candidates in elicitation interviews; (2) interventionist preparation via a formally evaluated training process involving a two-day workshop and sequence of three training cases; (3) post-training implementation for 24 months for which trained interventionists are randomized to 'as-needed' or 'gold-standard' technical assistance and self-referring students randomized (in 2:1 ratio) to TMCU or waitlist/control; and (4) examination of TMCU sustainment via interventionist completion of biannual outcome assessments, cost analyses, and exit interviews. Hypothesized effects include non-differential influence of the competing technical assistance methods on both TMCU fidelity and intervention effectiveness, with lesser school costs for the 'as-needed' than 'gold-standard' technical assistance and greater reduction in the frequency of marijuana use expected among TMCU-exposed students relative to those assigned to waitlist/control. DISCUSSION: This trial-occurring in Washington state as legislative, fiscal, and sociocultural forces converge to heighten exposure of American adolescents to marijuana-related harms-is set to advance understanding of best implementation practices for this and other efficacious, school-based interventions through examination of a data-driven technical assistance method. If shown to be clinically useful and affordable, the concept of a fidelity drift alarm could be readily translated to other empirically supported services and in other health settings. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03111667 registered 7 April 2017.

The Increasing Use of Cannabis Among Older Americans: A Public Health Crisis or Viable Policy Alternative?

Cannabis use among older Americans is increasing. Although much of this growth has been attributed to the entry of a more tolerant baby boom cohort into older age, recent evidence suggests the pathways to cannabis are more complex. Some older persons have responded to changing social and legal environments and are increasingly likely to take cannabis recreationally. Other older persons are experiencing age-related health care needs, and some take cannabis for symptom management, as recommended by a medical doctor. Whether these pathways to recreational and medical cannabis are separate or somewhat tangled remains largely unknown. There have been few studies examining cannabis use among the growing population of Americans aged 65 and older. In this essay, we illuminate what is known about the intersection between cannabis and the aging American population. We review trends concerning cannabis use and apply the age-period-cohort paradigm to explicate varied pathways and outcomes. Then, after considering the public health problems posed by those who misuse or abuse cannabis, we turn our attention to how cannabis may be a viable policy alternative in terms of supporting the health and well-being of a substantial number of aging Americans. On the one hand, cannabis may be an effective substitute for prescription opioids and other misused medications; on the other hand, cannabis has emerged as an alternative for the undertreatment of pain at the end of life. As intriguing as these alternatives may be, policy makers must first address the need for empirically driven, representative research to advance the discourse.

The Dangerous Drugs Act Amendment in Jamaica: Reviewing goals, implementation, and challenges.

BACKGROUND: After decades of internal discussion, the Government of Jamaica recently amended its laws to create a regulated and licensed cannabis industry for medical and scientific purposes. The new law also decriminalizes personal possession and use of cannabis; allows cannabis to be used by individuals for religious, medical, scientific and therapeutic purposes; and permits home cultivation of up to five plants. METHODS: We first describe the statutory changes under the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act of 2015 and compare it with other jurisdictions. We provide an analytical framework for understanding how the DDA Amendment affects key populations and achieves its stated goals, drawing on publicly available information and unstructured interviews with non-governmental stakeholders in Jamaica. RESULTS: The Amendment's primary goals are to deliver economic impact and reduce criminal justice costs. A relaxed policy of enforcement toward possession and use seems to have occurred even before the law's passage; after the law's passage, enforcement remains limited. To access medical cannabis under the DDA residents must receive authorization from a certified health professional in Jamaica; tourists may self-declare their medical need; and Rastafarians may grow and exchange non-commercially for religious purposes. CONCLUSION: Internally, many see "ganja" as an industry sorely needed to drive economic growth in Jamaica. Indeed, the potential impacts could be large, especially if Jamaica draws additional tourism or creates a viable export industry. A growing cannabis-related tourism industry seems more realistic. We maintain that policymakers and observers should proceed in an orderly fashion, continuing to identify and resolve remaining uncertainties, initiate new types of data collection, and make decisions based on realistic assessments of potentials for economic impact.

Getting to grips with the cannabis problem: the evolving contributions and impact of Griffith Edwards.

Griffith Edwards played an important role in cannabis policy debates within government advisory committees in the United Kingdom from the early 1970s until the early 1980s. This has largely been hidden from public knowledge by the confidentiality of these committee discussions. The purpose of this paper is to use Griffith's writings and the results of recent historical scholarship to outline the views he expressed, the reasons he gave for them, and to provide a brief assessment of his contribution to the development of British cannabis policy.

Cost-Effectiveness of School-Based Prevention of Cannabis Use.

BACKGROUND: Cannabis is the most frequently used illicit drug globally. Despite increasing evidence that cannabis use is associated with adverse health effects, the knowledge on preventative strategies is still limited. This study stemmed from a systematic review of effective prevention in which school-based programmes were identified as promising. The primary objective was to evaluate the cost effectiveness of Project ALERT (Adolescent, Learning, Experiences, Resistance, and Training), compared with ordinary ATOD (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug) education, among Swedish students in the eighth grade of compulsory school. METHODS: The cost-effectiveness analysis was performed from the societal perspective with quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) as an outcome (willingness-to-pay threshold €50,000) and follow-up periods from 1 year to a lifetime, considering a discounting rate of 3%, and with costs inflated to 2013 levels. A Markov model was constructed on the basis of the 'states' of single use, regular use, daily use and use of other illicit drugs, which were associated with 'complications' of psychosis, schizophrenia, traffic accidents, depression and amotivational syndrome. Health and cost consequences were linked to both states and complications. RESULTS: The programme was cost saving on the basis of evidence from the USA (ratio 1:1.1), and was cost effective (incremental cost-effectiveness ratio €22,384 per QALY) after reasonable adjustment for the Swedish context and with 20 years of follow-up. When the target group was restricted to boys who were neither studying nor working/doing work experience, the programme was cost effective after 9 years and cost saving (ratio 1:3.2) after 20 years. CONCLUSION: School-based prevention such as Project ALERT has the potential to be cost effective and to be cost saving if implemented in deprived areas. In the light of the shifting landscape regarding legalization of cannabis, it seems rational to continue the health economic analysis of prevention initiated here.

Lessons from conducting trans-national Internet-mediated participatory research with hidden populations of cannabis cultivators.

BACKGROUND: Internet-mediated research methods are increasingly used to access hidden populations. The International Cannabis Cultivation Questionnaire (ICCQ) is an online survey designed to facilitate international comparisons into the relatively under-researched but increasingly significant phenomenon of domestic cannabis cultivation. The Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium has used the ICCQ to survey over 6000 cannabis cultivators across 11 countries. In this paper, we describe and reflect upon our methodological approach, focusing on the digital and traditional recruitment methods used to access this hidden population and the challenges of working across multiple countries, cultures and languages. METHODS: Descriptive statistics showing eligibility and completion rates and recruitment source by country of residence. RESULTS: Over three quarters of eligible respondents who were presented with the survey were included in the final sample of n=6528. English-speaking countries expended more effort to recruit participants than non-English-speaking countries. The most effective recruitment modes were cannabis websites/groups (33%), Facebook (14%) and news articles (11%). While respondents recruited through news articles were older, growing practice variables were strikingly similar between these main recruitment modes. CONCLUSION: Through this process, we learnt that there are trade-offs between hosting multiple surveys in each country vs. using one integrated database. We also found that although perceived anonymity is routinely assumed to be a benefit of using digital research methodologies, there are significant limits to research participant anonymity in the current era of mass digital surveillance, especially when the target group is particularly concerned about evading law enforcement. Finally, we list a number of specific recommendations for future researchers utilising Internet-mediated approaches to researching hidden populations.

Global patterns of domestic cannabis cultivation: sample characteristics and patterns of growing across eleven countries.

BACKGROUND: This article aims to provide an overview of: demographic characteristics; experiences with growing cannabis; methods and scale of growing operations; reasons for growing; personal use of cannabis and other drugs; participation in cannabis and other drug markets; contacts with the criminal justice system for respondents to an online survey about cannabis cultivation drawn from eleven countries (N=6530). Important similarities and differences between the national samples recruited will be discussed. METHODS: This paper utilizes data from the online web survey of predominantly 'small-scale' cannabis cultivators in eleven countries conducted by the Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium (GCCRC). Here we focus primarily on descriptive statistics to highlight key similarities and differences across the different national samples. RESULTS: Overall there was a great deal of similarity across countries in terms of: demographic characteristics; experiences with growing cannabis; methods and scale of growing operations; reasons for growing; use of cannabis and other drugs; participation in cannabis and other drug markets, and; contacts with the criminal justice system. In particular, we can recognise that a clear majority of those small-scale cannabis cultivators who responded to our survey are primarily motivated for reasons other than making money from cannabis supply and have minimal involvement in drug dealing or other criminal activities. CONCLUSIONS: These growers generally come from 'normal' rather than 'deviant' backgrounds. Some differences do exist between the samples drawn from different countries suggesting that local factors (political, geographical, cultural, etc.) may have some influence on how small-scale cultivators operate, although differences in recruitment strategies in different countries may also account for some differences observed.