Early career psychiatrist’s attitude toward medicinal and recreational cannabis legalization in India; findings from an online survey

ABSTRACT

Background

The past two decades have seen significant debate around cannabis legalization globally, including in India. Since there is no data on professionals’ attitudes toward cannabis legalization; we aimed to assess early-career psychiatrists (ECP) views on cannabis legalization.

Methods

An online survey consisting of questions regarding personal and socio-demographic details, attitudes toward legalization of medicinal cannabis and recreational cannabis, and potential indications of medicinal cannabis use was distributed to ECPs. Data from 105 respondents were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square test, and t-test.

Results

More respondents agreed with the legalization of medical cannabis (55%) as compared to recreational cannabis (23%). More than 80% ECPs considered cannabis to be associated with psychosis and adverse mental health outcomes; however, those in favor of legalization considered cannabis to be less harmful. ECP with past cannabis use was more likely to have a permissive attitude toward the legalization of recreational cannabis (χ2 =6.79, p < .05) but not for medicinal cannabis use (χ2 =1.96, p > .05).

Conclusion

ECP in India are open to the idea of legalizing cannabis for medicinal purposes but not for recreational purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• Cannabis legalization
• medicinal cannabis
• recreational cannabis
• early career psychiatrist

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical review

The study was approved by the bioethics research committee, University of Health Sciences, Rohtak.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.