Legalize or Prohibit It? Quebec’s Exceptionalism on Cannabis Regulation and the Framing of Evidence in Policymaking

ABSTRACT

Successive governments of the Liberal and CAQ parties have worked on Quebec’s cannabis regulation. Although “progressiveness” is a key part of its political identity, and despite its population being the largest user of cannabis since it was legalized, Quebec adopted the most repressive legislation among Canadian provinces. The process of framing the issue was nevertheless heavily influenced by the use of scientific evidence. In this paper, we seek to understand how evidence from different scientific fields was mobilized in the policymaking process. In order to classify the actors’ positions and use of science, we develop a bidimensional continuum in which approaches to both health and behavior are presented. We specifically discuss three relevant issues that distinguish Quebec from other Canadian provinces: personal cultivation, public consumption, and legal age. Although multiple approaches to these issues were possible, government actors persistently put forward an individual approach to health and a moralistic approach to behavior. The adoption of the same repressive approach on each issue without scientific consensus suggests that scientific arguments were mobilized as a tool to support preexisting beliefs rather than to ground policy on evidence.

KEYWORDS:

• Cannabis legalization
• Quebec
• evidence-based policy
• framing
• policymaking

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the reviewers and directors of this special issue for their support and helpful insight throughout the publication process.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. If not otherwise stated in an endnote, quotations in this article are translated from French by the authors.

2. Original quotation in English.

3. See 5^th amendment passed to proposed Bill 2. http://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/projet-loi-2-42-1.html.

4. Original quotation in English.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to The Faculty of Political Science and Law of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) for their financial support.

Notes on contributors

Gabriel Lévesque

Gabriel Lévesque is a graduate student at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). His research interests include drug policy and the role of science and knowledge in politics, with a focus on Canada and the United States. His MA thesis compares the discourses on cannabis regulation in Quebec, Ontario, and Maine.

Maude Benoit

Maude Benoit is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Her research focuses on comparative public policy, with a specific emphasis on agroenvironmental policy, drug policy, home care policy and privatization of state-owned corporations.