CMA recommends minimum age of 21 to smoke pot, doctors' group wants limits on distribution and marketing of marijuana productThe
national organization that represents physicians says Canadians
shouldn't be legally allowed to smoke pot until they are 21 and should
face restrictions on the quantity and potency of the drug until they are
25. It's just one of a long list of recommendations the Canadian
Medical Association made in its submission to the marijuana task force,
which will advise the federal government on legalization. The CMA
provided a copy of that submission to CBC News.
The question of
age limits will be a significant one for Justin Trudeau's government as
it develops its legalization plans. He and his party have repeatedly
insisted legalization is the best way to keep pot out of the hands of
young people, arguing the current system fails in that regard and
funnels the profits to organized crime.
Frontiers in Psychiatry: Statistics on Cannabis Users Skew Perceptions of Cannabis UseCollecting
information about the prevalence of cannabis use is necessary but not
sufficient for understanding the size, dynamics, and outcomes associated
with cannabis markets. This paper uses two data sets describing
cannabis consumption in the United States and Europe to highlight
(1) differences in inferences about sub-populations based on the measure used to quantify cannabis-related activity;
(2)
how different measures of cannabis-related activity can be used to more
accurately describe trends in cannabis usage over time; and
(3) the
correlation between frequency of use in the past-month and average grams
consumed per use-day. Key findings: focusing on days of use instead of
prevalence shows substantially greater increases in U.S. cannabis use in
recent years; however, the recent increase is mostly among adults, not
youth.
Relatively more rapid growth in use days also occurred
among the college-educated and Hispanics. Further, data from a survey
conducted in seven European countries show a strong positive correlation
between frequency of use and quantity consumed per day of use,
suggesting consumption is even more skewed toward the minority of heavy
users than is suggested by days-of-use calculations.