Too young for Cannabis? Choice of minimum legal age for legalized non-medical Cannabis in Canada.
BMC Public Health
; 20(1): 557, 2020 May 14.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-32404144
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Choice of minimum legal age (MLA) for cannabis use is a critical and contentious issue in legalization of non-medical cannabis. In Canada where non-medical cannabis was recently legalized in October 2018, the federal government recommended age 18, the medical community argued for 21 or even 25, while public consultations led most Canadian provinces to adopt age 19. However, no research has compared later life outcomes of first using cannabis at these different ages to assess their merits as MLAs.METHODS:
We used doubly robust regression techniques and data from nationally representative Canadian surveys to compare educational attainment, cigarette smoking, self-reported general and mental health associated with different ages of first cannabis use.RESULTS:
We found different MLAs for differentoutcomes:
21 for educational attainment, 19 for cigarette smoking and mental health and 18 for general health. Assuming equal weight for these individual outcomes, the 'overall' MLA for cannabis use was estimated to be 19 years. Our results were robust to various robustness checks.CONCLUSION:
Our study indicated that there is merit in setting 19 years as MLA for non-medical cannabis.Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Fumar Maconha
/
Legislação de Medicamentos
Limite:
Adolescent
/
Adult
/
Humans
País/Região como assunto:
America do norte
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2020
Tipo de documento:
Article