The legalization of cannabis in Canada just had its third anniversary, which means it’s time for the federal government to review and possibly tweak the policy.
In some areas, the reviews are positive. Legalization has resulted in the emergence of a multibillion-dollar industry, new jobs and tax revenue. There have also been fewer cannabis-related drug convictions among young people.
But despite some positive signs, some health experts are concerned that the rapid growth of the industry combined with a lack of recent data about potential public health impacts means we could be missing some warning signs.
“Legalization is not an on-off switch that occurred,” said Dr. Daniel Myran, a public health doctor in Ottawa. “The retail market has matured over time, but at the same time, a lot of the data that we have about what happens after legalization comes from a very early period.”
Cannabis use is up
On Oct. 17, 2018, cannabis became legal in all provinces and territories for adults 18 and over, making Canada just the second country to legalize recreational use of the drug.
The Cannabis Act, introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, had a number of goals. Among them were to keep the drug out of the hands of youth, take profits away from criminals and to protect public health.
Since then, more Canadians seem to be using cannabis.
According to the government’s most recent survey, 27 per cent of participants reported having used marijuana in the past year — an increase from 22 per cent in the first cannabis survey conducted in 2017.
Statistics Canada data suggests retail sales in 2020 were just over $2.6 billion, which represented a 120 per cent increase compared to 2019.
While there are indications marijuana consumption has gone up, criminal convictions for cannabis-related crimes among youth have dropped dramatically.
Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, says the effects of cannabis legalization in this area are significant.
“From the perspective of a criminologist, legalization has been successful with respect to reducing the criminalization of people for cannabis offences,” said Owusu-Bempah, who is also an adviser to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and director of research for Cannabis Amnesty.
Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Toronto, says he considers marijuana legalization a success in a number of areas. (CBC)
However, there are still areas of concern, he said.
And many of those left with criminal records from offences committed prior to legalization are people of colour, he said, and he wants to see more records cleared.
Public health impact
Russell Callaghan, a professor in the University of Northern British Columbia’s northern medical program, is researching the impacts of legalization on a range of public health indicators. He says research in that area is still in its early stages.
What has stuck out to him so far, however, is that many of the concerns around legalized cannabis — including potential increased cases of cannabis-induced psychosis and schizophrenia, and driving under the influence of drugs — have not materialized.
Some provinces, such as Ontario and Quebec, saw a significant increase in drug-impaired driving charges that year, but the report attributes that mainly to new laws and enforcement powers.
Challenges ahead
Some experts caution it may be too early to call legalized marijuana an all-round success.
“The research is still quite new, so there’s a caveat there,” Callaghan said of his work.
Another goal of the Cannabis Act is to protect public health, and on that measure, rising consumption may bring new challenges.
“When we see increases in rates of use, that starts to raise a bit of a warning sign in terms of public health, because we don’t want to see more people consuming,” said Rebecca Jesseman, the director of policy at the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), an Ottawa-based non-governmental organization.
Rebecca Jesseman, the director of policy at the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, says it’s too early to assess the impact of legal marijuana in Canada, but an apparent increase in use could be cause for concern. (Paul Palmeter/CBC)
Callaghan says his ongoing research suggests youth visits to emergency departments because of poisoning or overuse of marijuana may be trending upward “significantly.” That mirrors American trends in states that have legalized marijuana, he said.
But what we know may not be as concerning as what we don’t, Jesseman said.
“To be honest, it’s just too soon,” she said of assessing legal marijuana’s effects on public health.
“The retail sales system is still stabilizing and really rapidly expanding, if you look at provinces like Ontario, where we’ve seen over 1,000 new stores in less than a year introduced. So I think that we really need to keep watching for the health and safety impacts and adjusting as we go.”
It’s a concern shared by Myran, who is a fellow in the department of family medicine at the University of Ottawa.
That’s because almost all of the available research on legal marijuana comes from the first six months after legalization, he said. The industry in many provinces and territories looks very different now than it did then — both in terms of the commercial availability of cannabis and the range of cannabis products available.
Data is still limited, and the COVID-19 pandemic has overlapped with much of the time marijuana has been legal.
Myran led a study published in June that found the number of retail cannabis stores in Canada had increased from 158 in November 2018 to 1,792 in April 2021.
“The problem it creates is that we have lots of data about the early phases after legalization, at the exact time that there was essentially no legal market,” he said.
“The concern is that, will we now, as the market matures and you see a large increase in cannabis sales, see related increases in cannabis use and harms?”
The number of marijuana retail locations across Canada has increased more than tenfold since 2018, a recent study suggests. (Hugo Belanger/CBC)
Edibles are not accounted for in much of the available data. That’s notable, Myran says, because edibles present some difficult public health challenges compared to other cannabis products such as flowers and oils.
“One of the chief harms is it’s much easier for people to take too much cannabis,” he said.
Myran adds that some provinces and territories have allowed edible products that closely resemble candy or baked goods when removed from their packaging, which can look appealing to children.
Industry seeks changes
Now that the third anniversary of legalization has come, the statutory review of the Cannabis Act is set to begin.
The Cannabis Council of Canada (C3), which represents more than 700 licensed producers and processors of cannabis in Canada, has some policy changes it wants the government to make.
C3 gives governments a failing grade in four areas — combating the illicit market, taxation policy, consumer education and awareness, and financial viability.
“We can’t get too excited in a circumstance where the illicit market remains with at least 50 per cent of the business,” said George Smitherman, the president and CEO of C3
“If the illicit market is still selling billions of dollars of cannabis, that’s a lot of tax revenue that governments aren’t getting.”
George Smitherman, president and CEO of the Cannabis Council of Canada, says the organization is hoping to work with policy-makers to implement changes to help the industry, including lifting some regulations and lowering the tax burden. (Submitted by George Smitherman)
Despite the many poor grades, Smitherman doesn’t call the overall execution of cannabis legalization a failure.
“I think maybe better put as a failed opportunity,” said the former Ontario health minister.
To that end, C3 is hoping to work with policy-makers on a number of changes to the industry, including reducing regulations and taxes. Smitherman says the excise tax is putting significant financial pressure on producers.
“There are regulations which weigh us down, which some people have characterized as nanny state regulations,” Smitherman said. “Including, just as an example, that you’re limited in the amount of cannabis as an individual that you can have to 30 grams.”
But it’s those types of proposed changes that most concern Myran, the public health doctor.
He predicts the government is going to come under heavy pressure from the industry to roll back public health regulations, including things like child-resistant packaging and restrictions on advertising. Those are public health measures that have proven effective in limiting harms from tobacco and alcohol, he said.
“That’s kind of my big worry, that as we move forward, we will take this lack of evidence on harms in the first three years as evidence that legalization and commercialization do not cause increases in use and harms, roll back some of the policies that are currently in place, and a couple of years from now see large increases in use … and harms and have to deal with them.”
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.
The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.
“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”
More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.
Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.
The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.
However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.
Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.
“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.
What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.
In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.
Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.
Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.
Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.
Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.
Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)
There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.
“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.
That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.
Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.
“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.
Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.
When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.
The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.
The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.
Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.
Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.
Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.
(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.
The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.
After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.
Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.
Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.
“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.
Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.
But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.
Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.
Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.
That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.
Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.
Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.
