Jenna Valleriani
The
federal government announced Thursday that it would create a task force
to handle marijuana legalization. Led by former deputy prime minister
Anne McLellan, the task force will feature nine individuals with varying
expertise.
In the announcement, Health Minister Jane Philpott declared
the legalization of cannabis will be “comprehensive and evidence-based”,
and yet in the same breath, reminded Canadians “marijuana has negative
effects on young brains and brain development in adolescence”.
What Dr. Philpott didn’t acknowledge is
that this body of scientific evidence is still being debated in the
scientific literature: it’s incomplete and has never actually
established that marijuana is the cause in these outcomes of cognitive
deficiency. We have also never established what the actual duration of
that impairment may be.
Meanwhile,
the protecting youth argument has become the cornerstone of what
responsible and restrictive legal cannabis access will look like.
However, under the guise of trying to protect young people, history
illustrates we often end up criminalizing and victimizing them even
further.
The reiteration of this “concrete evidence” has led some to
debate whether cannabis should follow provincial drinking ages, or if
access should only be afforded to those who are 25 years of age and
older.
While I am not discounting the
importance of this developing research, we also know young people in our
country have some of the highest rates of cannabis use in the world. In
Ontario, for example, roughly 20 per cent of adolescents aged 12-17
reported using cannabis at least once in 2013, and that number is as
high as 40 per cent when looking at those aged 18-29.
This
research also draws on samples of heavy, long-term users. To put that
into perspective, of the 20 per cent of teens who reported using
cannabis in 2013, roughly 2 per cent reported using cannabis daily.
Using cannabis once, or even occasionally, does not equate to this
outcome.
Further, 25 would be the
highest age limit of any jurisdiction with legal cannabis in the world.
What we should really be thinking about is that an age limit as high as
25 will actually end up widening the scope of the criminal justice
system by encouraging the access of cannabis through unregulated and
more dangerous avenues outside of a legalized system.
Young people are
already disproportionately affected by cannabis prohibition,
particularly marginalized youth, who account for the highest rates of
drug-related offences today. This is particularly troubling considering a
majority of these charges are for cannabis possession – laws which
continue to be enforced today despite legalization on the horizon.
As
a colleague recently pointed out, “age limits don’t reflect safe
initiation of use, but rather an age when we believe people can make
reasoned choices about their health and well being.” If we trust young
people to make these kinds of choices around other legally regulated
substances at 18 and 19 years of age in Canada, it follows that they are
able to exercise both agency and reasoned decision making in the
consumption of cannabis at a similar age.
We
ask young people to exercise these reasoned decision making skills
every day in their own lives, and sound cannabis policy should reflect
this. Some 25-year-old Canadians have mortgages, families, post
secondary and graduate degrees, and can join and fight for the Canadian
Armed Forces.
There’s no reason to set cannabis to a higher standard
than alcohol and tobacco under a legalized framework.
Setting an age as high as 25, based off incomplete research, is just not sound policy.
By
framing the potential for future criminalization and victimization of
young people as an effort to make society safer, we miss what it truly
means to support youth and prioritize the rights of our young people.
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