Cannabis

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Black Research Network

Crime

�Թϱ�� Mississauga

A new co-authored book by Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an associate professor in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, examines how harsh cannabis laws have contributed to racial injustice – and how to repair the communities most affected.

Waiting to Inhale: Cannabis Legalization and the Fight for Racial Justice illuminates how the war on drugs has disproportionally impacted Black and Indigenous communities in the United States through the stories of people who are on the front lines of advocacy.

The book, which came out this week, was written with entrepreneur and cannabis industry leader Tahira Rehmatullah. Both authors are scheduled to take part in a launch event at Massey College on April 19.

“The book really provides an overview of how drug law enforcement and the policing of drugs, especially cannabis, has been used to target Black, Indigenous and other racialized populations,” Owusu-Bempah says.

“We talk about the huge impact that this has had – not only on these individuals, but their families and their communities.”

In the 1970s, a U.S. government-led campaign – known as “the war on drugs” – was established to stop illegal drug distribution and use. In Canada, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney initiated a national drug strategy in July 1982.

But the criminalization of drug use and its history of systemically targeting racialized communities runs deeper.

In the U.S., The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 made the possession or transfer of cannabis illegal. According to the University of Pennsylvania, a trillion dollars have been spent enforcing drug policy since 1971. By contrast, about a billion dollars have been spent in Canada. Meanwhile, cannabis legalization in Canada and globally is a multibillion-dollar industry.

While discussions and political campaigns about cannabis legalization have largely focused on the positive societal and economic factors, it has in most cases failed to acknowledge the injustices of the war on drugs.

Waiting to Inhale personalizes the need for criminal justice reform in the U.S. through interviews with people who have served unjust cannabis convictions. Some are now dedicated to advancing cannabis amnesty, including Evelyn LeChapelle of Oakland, Calif., who was convicted in 2013 as a young mother. She spent 87 months in prison after a 2013 arrest for a small role in a cannabis distribution operation – despite having no previous criminal record. LaChapelle was released in 2018 and is now a social justice advocate and entrepreneur who offers employment to those with a similar story.

The book also tells the story of Michael Thompson, who in received a prison sentence of 42 to 60 years for selling three pounds of cannabis to a friend – and police informant – in Michigan in 1994. Thompson was incarcerated for 25 years until the recreational use of cannabis became legal in the state in 2018. He was the longest-serving, non-violent offender in Michigan’s history.

“When we look at the harsh penalties associated with the simple possession of cannabis in many U.S. states, they are much more consequential than other more serious crimes like financial fraud or even violent offenses,” Owusu-Bempah says.

Canada and cannabis

While Waiting to Inhale focuses on the decriminalization of cannabis in the U.S, there are many parallels with Canada – a conversation Owusu-Bempah is leading.

Owusu-Bempah is a member of Canada’s Black Justice Strategy’s steering committee. Established to help reform Canada’s criminal justice system, the committee stems from a 2019 commitment from the federal government to address anti-Black racism and the over-representation of Black Canadians in federal prisons.

The criminalization of cannabis in Canada can be traced to the 1920s when a moral panic was cultivated around its use, targeting Black and Indigenous populations. After a change in drug laws during the Mulroney administration, Black Ontarians experienced increased placement in the province’s correctional facilities. According to a 2021 report, one in 15 young Black men in Ontario has experienced jail time, compared to nearly one in 70 young white men.

Before legalization, Canadian youth had amongst the highest rates of cannabis use globally yet marginalized people are still most likely to be arrested for cannabis possession and use, Owusu-Bempah says.

Moving forward

In their book, Owusu-Bempah and Rehmatullah identify key action items to overturn racist policies and rebuild communities affected by cannabis criminalization.

Owusu-Bempah says clearing the records of the convicted remains vital in reconciliation since opens avenues for employment. He adds that redistributing tax revenue generated from legal cannabis sales to reinvest in and revitalize neighbourhoods is also important.

He would also like to see the legal industry create employment opportunities for people with cannabis convictions or other drug offences.

“What we want to see is space within this legal industry for those people who've been targeted by the war on drugs,” Owusu-Bempah says. “The billions of dollars spent on police, courts and corrections were not spent on schools, hospitals, community centres and community health-care centres within those neighbourhoods. We highlight these possibilities [in the book].

"At the most basic level, the criminal records of people who've been convicted of activities that are now no longer illegal should be cleared.”

Researcher explores use of cannabinoids to treat obesity

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 14:29:24 +0000

Researcher explores use of cannabinoids to treat obesity

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 01/04/2022 - 09:29

Cutline

(Photo by Chris Roussakis/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Gabrielle Giroday

Topic

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Alumni

Though cannabis is often associated with “the munchies” in popular culture, University of Toronto researcher Justin Matheson is asking whether cannabinoids – naturally occurring compounds in the plant – can actually be used to treat obesity.

Justin Matheson

“On the surface, the research seems a bit paradoxical,” says Matheson, who earned a PhD from the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s department of pharmacology and toxicology in 2020 and is now completing a post-doctoral research fellowship in the Translational Addiction Research Laboratory at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

“But what my supervisor [Professor Bernard Le Foll, chair of addiction psychiatry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine] and others have found is that people who use cannabis regularly actually have lower BMI, lower risk of obesity and a lower of risk of diabetes then people who don’t use cannabis.”

Matheson is one of the inaugural cohort of the Toronto Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research Consortium (TC3) fellows.

He recently spoke to writer Gabrielle Giroday about his work and the fast-growing field of cannabis- and cannabinoid-related health research.

What interested you in this area of research?

My work is largely focused on substance use and addictions. For my doctorate, I focused on sex and gender and how they impact cannabis use. For example, I published a paper in 2019 looking at how smoking cannabis affected young adults of different sexes.

Before this project, I was already very interested in investigating addiction to cannabis and looking at how cannabinoids can be used to treat substance use disorders.

As for this current research, there are interesting parallels between obesity and overeating, and addiction or substance use disorders. Both involve harmful behavioural patterns that lead to excessive intake of food or psychoactive drugs. It’s a new area that deserves further exploration.

Can you explain your approach?

This research will include a randomized controlled trial that will look at if nabilone – a synthetic cannabinoid drug – can reduce body weight in adults with obesity.

We are recruiting a sample of 60 people who have obesity and randomizing them to receive either a high dose of the drug nabilone, a low dose, or a placebo. Participants will be 25 to 45 years old.

Nabilone will be taken as an oral capsule. It’s very similar to THC, which is the active component of cannabis, but it’s a little structurally different. The study participants will be taking nabilone daily over the course of 12 weeks.

During that period, we’ll be monitoring the patients’ body weight as well as other measures to see if there are any adverse effects of the nabilone.

In the research, we’re not just trying to see if the cannabinoid drug can reduce body weight in adults who are obese, but we’re also trying to understand why. We’ll do this by using neuroimaging, measuring changes in the gut microbiome, and measuring cannabinoids in the blood and different hormones.

We’re also taking measures of participants’ brain activity at the baseline, before they enter treatment and at the end of the 12 weeks. Specifically, we’re interested in seeing how the neural response to food images changes over the course of treatment.

We’ve started recruiting participants to take part of the research, and we’re hoping to finish the trial in two years.

What do you hope to achieve through this work?

Nabilone is similar to THC. And we know cannabis actually is pro-appetite – in that it increases appetite. In the past, cannabis has been associated with “the munchies” and been used by people with wasting syndromes or who are having problems with appetite. So, on the surface, the research seems a bit paradoxical.

But what my supervisor Le Foll and others have found is that people who use cannabis regularly actually have lower BMI, lower risk of obesity and a lower of risk of diabetes then people who don’t use cannabis.

This research will be a first-in-human trial to see if administering nabilone will lead to a lower body weight in adults who are obese, which would replicate animal findings and which would be line with what we’re seeing in epidemiological data. We don’t know what we’ll find yet.

How will you measure the effects of nabilone on each participant?

The endocannabinoid system – which is the body’s innate system that underlies the effects of cannabinoids – is a system that is very much involved in all sorts of brain processes such as our perceptions of pleasure and reward. So, we think it’s possible our research might find that nabilone reduces participants’ responses to food images, which is why we’re doing neuroimaging of participants’ brains.

Plus, there is also an interesting relationship between cannabinoids and gut bacteria, so we want to measure the gut microbiome to see whether that changes with treatment.

Research has found that people with obesity tend to have higher levels of endocannabinoids, which are the body’s own cannabinoid compounds. We believe that taking nabilone, or any cannabinoid drug, over a period of time might disrupt endocannabinoid levels, which could be one way that nabilone leads to a reduction in body weight.

How would you describe the field of cannabis or cannabinoid research these days?

I think cannabis and cannabinoid research has changed, especially after legalization. It’s definitely a really growing field and I feel lucky I entered the field when I did in 2015 – three years before legalization happened.

I still think there’s still a lot of stigma around cannabis use. This affects the participants I work with, who often use cannabis or have a cannabis use disorder. Hopefully, with legalization, this will change.

I think it’s a really exciting time to be doing cannabis research, especially because there are a lot of misconceptions. It seems to be a very polarizing topic. You have cannabis advocates who present it as a “cure-all drug,” and then you have prohibitionists, who argue it’s bad and harming people and should be illegal.

To me, it’s somewhere in the middle. There are a lot of misconceptions in the research community and in the general public, which is why the field is so fascinating and why it’s where I want to take the rest of my career.

�Թϱ�� researchers to study impact of cannabis on Indigenous oral health

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 15:59:04 +0000

�Թϱ�� researchers to study impact of cannabis on Indigenous oral health

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 06/10/2020 - 11:59

Cutline

Sacred objects at an Indigenous Learning Circle symposium at �Թϱ��'s Faculty of Dentistry (photo by Katia Taylor)

Topic

Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Dentistry

Indigenous

A multidisciplinary team from the University of Toronto, with experts from the Faculty of Dentistry and the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health has been awarded a five year, $1.5-million grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to study the impact of cannabis use on the oral health of Indigenous populations.

The researchers will work in partnership with Indigenous communities and public health authorities, including: Norway House Cree Nation (Kinosao Sipi Cree Nation) in northern Manitoba; the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority (WAHA), with the First Nations of Moose Factory, Fort Albany, Attawapiskat, Weenusk (Peawanuck), and Kashechewan; and the town of Moosonee in northern Ontario; and Alberta Health Services (AHS) in Calgary, Alta.

Over the course of the study, participants will be monitored for changes in their oral health and oral microbiome, including inflammation of the oral mucosa and periodontal tissues and the development of pre-cancerous lesions and cancers of the mouth, head and neck, as well as changes in oral and facial sensory function.The study aims to provide first evidence of the oral health risks associated with cannabis use in Canada’s Indigenous populations, which already experience a disproportionate burden of oral disease.

“Indigenous people are resilient,” says Angela Mashford-Pringle, assistant professor and associate director of the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health (WBIIH) at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and co-principal investigator of the grant. “Cannabis is one issue that has been discussed in many First Nations communities and how it affects the community.

“There is a need to understand the dental and health effects of cannabis for First Nations communities.”

With cannabis legalized in Canada two years ago, studies have shown that there are oral health risks associated with use of the drug, including an increase in periodontal diseases. Indigenous leaders and public health experts have expressed concerns regarding the escalated risks in these vulnerable communities.

“Knowing how big an impact the use of cannabis has on oral health indicators among the Indigenous population will be critical towards the development of new policies and guidelines in prevention and treatment of oral diseases,” says Siew-Ging Gong, associate professor at the Faculty of Dentistry and a co-principal investigator of the grant.

The researchers hope to raise awareness in these communities of the impact of cannabis on oral health, and to do so in culturally appropriate, Indigenous-focused ways. The team will use what’s known as the Learning Circle model in which elders and other community members share their knowledge.

“The Learning Circle utilizes the First Nations Principles of OCAP, which stands for First Nations’ Ownership, Control, Access and Possession of data and data collection processes in their communities,” says Herenia Lawrence, associate professor at the Faculty of Dentistry and principal investigator of the grant.

With an emphasis on oral transmission of knowledge rooted within Indigenous communities and their values, the researchers hope to create respectful health research relationships that can have long-lasting impact on Indigenous communities’ health.

“The Circles will allow us to evaluate the research outcomes through the lens of the community,” Lawrence says.

The University of Toronto research team includes:

Herenia Lawrence, associate professor, Faculty of Dentistry (project lead)

Iacopo Cioffi, assistant professor, Faculty of Dentistry

Siew-Ging Gong, associate professor, Faculty of Dentistry

Jose Lança, assistant professor, Faculty of Dentistry

Celine Levesque, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Oral Microbial Genetics, Faculty of Dentistry

Marco Magalhaes, assistant professor, Faculty of Dentistry

Angela Mashford-Pringle, associate professor, associate director of the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health (WBIIH), Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Cannabis edibles pose serious risks to our kids: �Թϱ�� expert

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 21:09:57 +0000

Cannabis edibles pose serious risks to our kids: �Թϱ�� expert

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 01/21/2020 - 16:09

Cutline

Cannabis edibles like sour candy straws are now available for purchase and consumption and the risks from overdosing are quite high (photo via Shutterstock)

Topic

In October 2019, Health Canada approved the sale of cannabis edibles, topicals and extracts for early 2020. Let us hope that one of Health Canada’s New Year’s resolutions is to do a better job of regulating cannabis and protecting the public, and in particular youth, from harm.

Cannabis edibles offer a lucrative opportunity for licensed cannabis producers and retailers in both the medical and recreational market. However, while governments and businesses move to meet public demand and their bottom lines, there is a need to acknowledge the inherent risks cannabis, and in particular edibles, can pose.

While edibles may provide a delivery system that provides the intoxicating effects of cannabis while avoiding the risks of smoking, the delayed and variable absorption of cannabis edibles can result in over-consumption and unpredictable results.

As both an addiction medicine and family physician, I have seen many adolescents whose cannabis use has negatively affected their mood, motivation, sleep and ability to simply function.

Substantial harm to youth

The intoxicating effects of cannabis when taken orally can be delayed up to 90 minutes, peaking a few hours later, and may last for several hours. Aside from the expected diminished concentration, decreased executive functioning and impaired memory, acute cannabis toxicity can present as severe anxiety, panic attacks, nausea, delirium or psychosis.

In Colorado, where cannabis sales were legalized for people 21 and older in 2012, edible products are the major cause of cannabis intoxication. Emergency room visits and hospitalizations due to adverse reactions from cannabis edibles have increased in Colorado since legalization, and adolescent visits rose to 4.9 per 1,000 visits in 2015 from 1.8 per 1,000 visits in 2009.

It’s true that often these symptoms are temporary and that a cannabis overdose likely won’t kill someone, but it can cause significant mental and physical disability.

During the early phase of cannabis legalization in Oregon and Alaska, 253 overdoses – some requiring stays in the intensive care unit and including one death – were reported to poison centres over a 16-month period: Seventy-one individuals were under the age of 12 and 42 were between the ages of 12 and 17. The median age was only 20 years old.

Beyond the risks of acute toxicity, cannabis use that starts in adolescence has been linked to a variety of harms, including depression, suicidality, psychosis and schizophrenia. Considering that Canadian youth are the highest adolescent users in the world and that they believe, despite strong scientific evidence to the contrary, that cannabis will improve their mood, anxiety and sleep, there are significant challenges in protecting them from potential cannabis-related harms.

Intoxicants aren’t candy

Unfortunately, Health Canada has allowed troublingly high THC concentrations (up to 30 per cent in some cases) in dried cannabis products. While many edibles will be purchased directly from retailers, edibles made at home may have higher THC concentrations.

Health Canada has also done little to rein in misleading advertising by the cannabis industry. It has allowed licensed producers to make unsubstantiated claims about the medicinal value of cannabis, which only further contributes to positive adolescent social attitudes towards cannabis.

Chocolates with marijuana will be widely available as edible products are introduced to the market (photo via Shutterstock)

While Health Canada does not permit direct advertising of cannabis and requires plain packaging and warnings on all cannabis products, the cannabis industry is able to market through media stories and their websites.

The Ontario Cannabis Store, a Crown corporation, has a picture of chocolate squares to advertise edibles on their website and is set to roll out more than 50 new edible and vape products this week. Canopy Growth is reportedly rolling out cannabis-infused flavoured sparkling waters and gourmet chocolate bars in three different flavours.

Health Canada needs to do better

Public consumption of edibles is likely to increase. In Colorado, edibles accounted for 45 per cent of all sales by 2014. Health Canada’s packaging guidelines and dose limits for edibles (10 milligrams per item) will only go so far in mitigating potential harms.

Health Canada has vaguely stated that the products should not be appealing to youth, but it is hard to imagine that chocolates and flavoured drinks with names like “Pineapple Orange Gummies” would not be enticing to that population.

A more concerted public health campaign and detailed warnings on products are needed. Targeting successful cannabis education to youth is a challenging task but an imperative one.

While the Supreme Court of Canada ruled to give Canadians legal access to cannabis, Health Canada now bears the regulatory and educational responsibility. In 2018, Health Canada committed a little over $100 million over six years for public cannabis education and surveillance. But $186 million in taxes were collected in the first five months of legalization. Health Canada could and should invest so much more into oversight and education. The collective health of our youth depends upon it.

Anita Srivastava is an associate professor in the department of family and community medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This is �Թϱ��: Akwasi Owusu-Bempah on why he became an advocate for cannabis amnesty

davidlee1 — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 04:00:00 +0000

This is �Թϱ��: Akwasi Owusu-Bempah on why he became an advocate for cannabis amnesty davidlee1 Thu, 10/17/2019 - 00:00

Topic

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Sociology

�Թϱ�� Mississauga

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah calls the end of almost a century of cannabis prohibition “such a fascinating time in history.”

But one year after cannabis became legal in Canada and the federal government announced that Canadians with criminal convictions for small amounts of marijuana can apply for pardons, Owusu-Bempah, an assistant professor in the department of sociology at �Թϱ�� Mississauga, says more change is urgently needed.

Why? Racialized Canadians, he says, have been disproportionately impacted over decades by the country's drug laws.

In this video, which launches the second season of the This is �Թϱ�� series, Owusu-Bempah discusses how his research into race, policing and the criminal justice sytem has led to his advocacy for an amnesty for those previously found guilty of simple cannabis possession.

“People have often referred to cannabis as a gateway drug, but when they do so they typically mean that they see cannabis as a gateway to harder drug use,” said Owusu-Bempah.

“I see cannabis as a gateway drug in a different way. I see it as a gateway into the criminal justice system for people who get saddled with criminal records for things like minor cannabis possession.”

Watch the first season of This is �Թϱ�� video series

Apartment and condo dwellers report smelling cannabis more than tobacco smoke, �Թϱ�� researchers say

geoff.vendeville — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 14:50:49 +0000

Apartment and condo dwellers report smelling cannabis more than tobacco smoke, �Թϱ�� researchers say

geoff.vendeville Fri, 09/13/2019 - 10:50

Cutline

The �Թϱ�� study on exposure to cannabis smoke may help inform the debate on how to regulate cannabis, one of the author says (photo by Cavan Images/Getty Images)

Topic

Health

More people in apartment buildings and condominiums reported exposure to cannabis smoke than tobacco one year before legalization, a new University of Toronto study says.

The �Թϱ�� public-health researchers based their findings on a telephone survey of Ontario adults by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in 2017. Extrapolating from the CAMH results, the researchers suggest about 827,000 people in multi-unit dwellings were exposed to cannabis smoke from hallways, other units or elsewhere in their building – as opposed to about 728,000 who smelled tobacco smoke.

“I was surprised there were more reports of cannabis than tobacco,” says co-author Michael Chaiton (pictured left), an associate professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. “We’ve known anecdotally there had been increasing calls and complaints about cannabis smoke, but we hadn’t been able to quantify it until now.”

Chaiton hopes the results will contribute to the debate over whether to regulate cannabis like alcohol, by forbidding its consumption in public spaces, or like tobacco, by prohibiting its use in indoor public spaces or near buildings.

He and his co-authors Alanna Chu and Pamela Kaufman, an assistant professor at Dalla Lana, published their study on Sept. 10 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

The team has been tracking exposure to tobacco smoke in residential buildings for many years, and recently they have become increasingly concerned about cannabis second-hand smoke.

Despite the surprising results, Chaiton says it’s very possible that the study underreported cannabis exposure, since the authors found people who consume cannabis themselves were more likely to report smelling it – suggesting that not everybody can identify cannabis by its pungent scent.

The study, the first to examine the prevalence of involuntary cannabis exposure in residential buildings, also showed that people of lower income, who more often live in multi-unit buildings, are at higher risk of exposure to second-hand smoke and any related health effects from other people’s cannabis use.

But those health effects are not yet fully clear.

Third-hand smoke, the residue from smoke that clings to walls and furniture or settles in dust, is a particular concern for tobacco because nicotine is sticky and accumulates easily on surfaces like drapery, clothing and furniture.

But Chaiton says researchers don’t yet know whether cannabis travels the same way through apartment buildings, including ventilation systems, or how it contributes to third-hand smoke contamination.

The next step is to determine whether exposure reports have increased since the legalization of cannabis in October 2018.

“If there are more people smoking cannabis or smoking more freely, indoor use in buildings may increase,” Chaiton says. “But, on the other hand, people may be more willing to go outside, lessening second-hand exposure indoors. As well, people may be less likely to report it to surveyors because it’s legal – or they may be more likely to complain if they have less fear of repercussions.”

Funding for the study was provided by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.

�Թϱ�� expert on why cannabis legalization must include cannabis equity

noreen.rasbach — Thu, 16 May 2019 18:50:00 +0000

�Թϱ�� expert on why cannabis legalization must include cannabis equity

noreen.rasbach Thu, 05/16/2019 - 14:50

Cutline

A flag is flown during the annual marijuana 420 gathering in Toronto (photo by Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

Topic

Toronto Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research Consortium

The Conversation

Canada’s federal government is currently working to pass a bill that would provide pardons for people convicted of minor cannabis possession. With a federal election around the corner, it may be too little, too late.

As a result of mounting pressure, Canada’s federal government is now struggling to pass this bill before politicians leave the capital for the summer break.

If the bill does not pass, it is unlikely to do so before a national election this fall, leaving tens of thousands of lives hanging in the balance.

Racialized law enforcement

It has been a little over six months since Canada legalized recreational cannabis, and by most accounts this national experiment has been a relative success. What Canadian legalization still lacks, however, are the important measures needed to repair the damage caused by almost a century of prohibition.

American legislators should take note.

As is the case in many other jurisdictions, Canadian drug law enforcement is heavily racialized. Data gathered from Toronto and other major Canadian cities show that Black and Indigenous people have been arrested for minor cannabis possession at rates as high as five and nine times that of whites, respectively.

This means that Black and Indigenous people have been disproportionately burdened with the outcomes of a criminal record – reduced educational and employment opportunities, poorer housing prospects and travel restrictions – for engaging in an activity enjoyed by a significant proportion of the Canadian population.

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah presented a TEDx talk, The Untapped Promise of Cannabis Legalization, as part of its Mississauga series

A lesson for the United States

Unlike the narrative now dominant among the U.S. 2020 Democratic hopefuls, Canada’s move towards legalization was never about social justice or reparations. Having promised recreational cannabis as part of his campaign platform, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government rushed to draft and pass the Cannabis Act in time to help them secure a political win.

Addressing the racialized harms of cannabis prohibition barely featured in political debates over legalization in Canada. Instead, the focus was on promoting public health and diverting profits away from the illicit market.

While we dither over whether to provide pot pardons, equally substantive equity measures – such as the reinvestment of cannabis tax revenue into the communities most harmed by prohibition and the incorporation of the drug war’s victims into the legal cannabis industry – go largely unrealized. For legalization to be a true success, these measures must be forthcoming.

Opponents were right to derail legalization in New York state last month because the proposed bill failed to adequately address social justice issues up front.

Given the nature of the political process, it can be all too easy for politicians to satisfy themselves with half-baked policies. If there is one thing that American lawmakers can learn from the Canadian example, it is that cannabis equity must be incorporated into legalization from the outset.

Given the lack of racial and economic diversity in established cannabis industries, not doing so is likely to further entrench the inequalities created by the war on drugs.

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah is an assistant professor in the department of sociology at University of Toronto Mississauga.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Researchers from �Թϱ��, affiliated hospitals form research consortium to study risks and benefits of cannabis

noreen.rasbach — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 18:03:46 +0000

Researchers from �Թϱ��, affiliated hospitals form research consortium to study risks and benefits of cannabis

noreen.rasbach Mon, 04/08/2019 - 14:03

Cutline

Daniele Piomelli of the University of California, Irvine was the keynote speaker at last week's Cannabis Innovation Summit (photo by Jim Oldfield)

Peter Boisseau

Topic

City & Culture

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Faculty of Medicine

Global