High time for the development of gendered interventions to prevent young people driving after cannabis use: evidence from Canada’s National Cannabis Survey

Abstract

In 2018, Canada became the second country in the world to legalize the use and supply of cannabis for non-medical purposes. The official primary objectives of the government are protecting public health, restricting access by youth, and reducing illicit drug market activity. The mandate of protecting health and safety shifts the focus from justifying punitive responses to addressing increasing rates of use and related risk behaviours such as driving after cannabis use (DACU). To shed more light on DACU through comparison of data immediately before and after legalization in the Canadian experience, we conducted a multi-wave analysis of the National Cannabis Survey. With particular attention to the influence of gender on perceptions and behaviour of youth and young adults, our findings (reassuringly) suggest there have been no measurable increases in self-reported rates of DACU. Whereas gender is a reliably significant predictor, with DACU being far more common among males, we also found that females in this age group are just as likely to report having been as a passenger of a driver who recently used cannabis. The findings are interpreted with reference to research on education and prevention, and gendered variation in peer-based harm reduction initiatives for youth and young adults.

Keywords:

• Cannabis legalization
• Driving After Cannabis Use (DACU)
• impaired driving
• multiwave comparison
• national cannabis survey
• public health
• gender
• youth and young adults

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data set associated with the paper is the National Cannabis Survey. It can be accessed through Statistics Canada.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under Grant# 435-2019-0125. Additional support was provided by a Mitacs Elevate Postdoctoral Fellowship in partnership with the University of Guelph and the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.