Issue: On 17 October 2018, Canada legalised non-medical cannabis. Critically, the cannabis market in Canada has changed considerably since legalisation. In this scoping review, we identified available evidence on changes in cannabis-related health harms following legalisation and contextualised findings based on legal market indicators.
Approach: Electronic searches were conducted to identify studies that compared changes in cannabis-related health harms pre- and post-legalisation. We contextualised each study by the mean per capita legal cannabis stores and sales during the study period and compared study means to per capita stores and sales on October 2021-3 years following legalisation.
Implications and conclusions: Some measures of cannabis harms have increased since legalisation but studies to date have captured periods of relatively low market maturity. Longer-term monitoring of health harms as the market continues to expand is indicated.
Keywords: cannabis harms; cannabis policy; commercialisation; non-medical cannabis legalisation; scoping review.
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