Tag: medical cannabis

Reading of the Week: Legal Cannabis at 5 – Considering Nonmedical Legalization with a CMAJ Commentary, Dr. Buckley’s Reflections and Major Papers

From the Editor

On Oct. 17, 2018, the government of Canada will launch a national, uncontrolled experiment in which the profits of cannabis producers and tax revenues are squarely pitched against the health of Canadians. When Bill C-45 comes into force in mid-October, access to recreational marijuana will be legal, making Canada one of a handful of countries to legalize recreational use of the drug. Given the known and unknown health hazards of cannabis, any increase in use of recreational cannabis after legalization, whether by adults or youth, should be viewed as a failure of this legislation.

 – Dr. Diane Kelsall, Editor-in-Chief, CMAJ, October 2018

On Tuesday, Canada’s experiment with the legalization of cannabis for nonmedical purposes turned five. Did use go up? What about health care utilization? Have there been benefits from justice and social justice perspectives? Is it the failure that Dr. Kelsall feared?

Now is a good time to pause and review the impact of this change. In this Reading, we try to do just that. 

We start with a CMAJ commentary just published. Benedikt Fischer (of Simon Fraser University) and co-authors look at the evidence, including studies on use and ED presentations, as well as statistics on purchases. “A consideration of the evidence 5 years after implementation suggests that success in meeting policy objectives has been mixed, with social justice benefits appearing to be more tangibly substantive than health benefits.”

Dr. Leslie Buckley (of the University of Toronto) mulls this moment with some comments about the CMAJ paper, and the larger discussion. “[T]he legal changes were enacted and resulted in positive outcomes while the preventive changes which would require more financial investment and tight regulation received less attention.”

Finally, we look at three important papers on cannabis that have been featured in this series over the past five years, and another one that we haven’t looked at before.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Is Adult Mental Illness More Common? The New Acta Paper; Also, Hill on Cannabis & Neustadter’s Med School Experience

From the Editor

Family physician colleagues talk about how many patients now disclose mental health problems. Our EDs see more patients with mental illness than ever. Antidepressant use has doubled between 2000 and 2015 across OECD countries.

So is mental illness more common than before?

Just last week, a CBC reporter asked me this question. She noted that the rise of businesses offering mindfulness and the proliferation of mental health apps. But as stigma fades and people are more comfortable talking about mental illness, it’s also possible that more people are seeking care, but that there aren’t more people with illness.

depressionintcover0807Mental illness: more commonly discussed, more common?

In our first selection, we consider a new paper from Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. Dirk Richter (of Bern University of Applied Sciences) and his co-authors use a systematic review and meta-analysis to see if adult mental illness is increasing over time. “We conclude that the prevalence increase of adult mental illness is small and we assume that this increase is mainly related to demographic changes.”

In the second selection, we consider a new JAMA review of the evidence – or lack of evidence – for medical use of cannabis. Dr. Kevin P. Hill (of Harvard Medical School) writes: “Insufficient evidence exists for the use of medical cannabis for most conditions for which its use is advocated.”

In the third selection, Yale School of Medicine med student Eli Neustadter discusses a challenging patient and the connection they form. “MB and I also found time to meet weekly in a quiet room with nothing but two chairs, two guitars, and two picks.”

There will be no Readings for the next two weeks. The conversation will continue after Labour Day.

DG

 

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