Canada's cannabis legalization and police-reported cannabis-related criminal incidents among youth, 2015-2021

Russell C Callaghan; Marcos Sanches; Andrew Hathaway; Mark Asbridge; Marjorie MacDonald; Stephen J Kish

doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2023.109892

Canada's cannabis legalization and police-reported cannabis-related criminal incidents among youth, 2015-2021

Drug Alcohol Depend. 2023 Apr 23:109892. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2023.109892. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Russell C Callaghan¹, Marcos Sanches², Andrew Hathaway³, Mark Asbridge⁴, Marjorie MacDonald⁵, Stephen J Kish⁶

Affiliations

¹ University of Northern British Columbia, Northern Medical Program, 3333 University Way, Prince George, British ColumbiaV2N 4Z9, Canada; Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Human Brain Laboratory, 250 College Street, Toronto, OntarioM5T 1R8, Canada; University of Victoria, Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR), 2300 McKenzie Avenue, Victoria, British ColumbiaV8N 5M8, Canada.
² Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Biostatistics Core, 60 White Squirrel Way, Toronto, OntarioM6J 1H4, Canada.
³ University of Guelph, College of Social and Applied Human Sciences, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, OntarioN1G 2W1, Canada.
⁴ Dalhousie University, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, 5790 University Avenue, Halifax, Nova ScotiaB3H 1V7, Canada.
⁵ University of Victoria, Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR), 2300 McKenzie Avenue, Victoria, British ColumbiaV8N 5M8, Canada.
⁶ Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Human Brain Laboratory, 250 College Street, Toronto, OntarioM5T 1R8, Canada. Electronic address: Stephen.Kish@camh.ca.

PMID: 37183068
DOI: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2023.109892

Abstract

Background: We previously reported that the 2018 Canadian Cannabis Act, allowing youth to possess up to 5 g dried cannabis or equivalent for personal use/sharing, was associated with short-term (76 days) post-legalization reduction in police-reported cannabis-related crimes among youth. To establish whether the change might be sustained, we now estimate this association during a much longer time period by including an additional three years of post-legalization data.

Methods: Using national daily police-reported criminal incident data from January 1, 2015-December 31, 2021 from the Canadian Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR-2), the study employed Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) time series models to assess the associations between legalization and youth (12-17 years) cannabis-related offenses (male, n = 34,508; female, n = 9529).

Results: Legalization was associated with significant reductions in both male and female police-reported cannabis-related offenses: females, 4.04 daily incidents [95% confidence interval (CI), 3.08; 5.01], a 62.1% decrease [standard error (se), 34.3%]; males, 12.42 daily offenses (95% CI, 8.99; 15.86), a reduction of 53.0% (se, 22.7%). There was no evidence of associations between cannabis legalization and patterns of property or violent crimes.

Conclusions: Results suggest that the impact of the Cannabis Act on reducing cannabis-related youth crimes is sustained, supporting the Act's objectives to reduce cannabis-related criminalization among youth and associated effects on the Canadian criminal justice system.

Keywords: Canada; Cannabis legalization; Cannabis-related crime; Police-reported crime; Uniform Crime Reporting Survey; Youth.