Health experts should take lead on weed packaging
“I believe that nicotine is not addictive.”
This was the position the CEOs of the seven largest American tobacco companies staunchly stood by while testifying in front of an infamous 1994 Congressional hearing.
The scientific evidence at the time rendered their ostensible belief a tragic joke — a term that accurately describes the idea that Canadians should blindly trust marijuana producers and distributors to design their own packaging. Ottawa would do well by having health experts take the lead in ensuring marijuana packaging is transparent.
If this obligation is abdicated to producers and distributors, it hardly takes a genius to predict some of the ramifications. One example is the many misleading health-benefit claims that will be touted to consumers:
Need a cure for your insomnia? No problem, here’s a strain that you can toke on before calling it a night. Need to lose some weight? We have some slimming gluten-free edibles that have been “proven” to work fast and effectively. A little hesitant because you don’t know how safe this is? It’s completely safe, as it’s all “natural.”
Well, cocaine is also “natural,” though that hardly makes it a nutritious vegetable. And “proven?” Says who? Blogs? Your experience? That of your friends and Google searches that feed your confirmation bias?
Yes, marijuana can be used for medical purposes, but the science is sobering. For example, a 2015 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association investigated medical marijuana uses and concluded that while it is used to treat a host of conditions, only a few such instances are backed by evidence, while many are not.
Stepping away from medical uses, a highly influential and widely cited 2007 systematic review (i.e. a study that looks at all relevant previous studies) in the prestigious academic journal the Lancet concluded that “there is now sufficient evidence to warn young people that using cannabis could increase their risk of developing psychotic illness later in life.” Let me repeat that: “psychotic illness.” Moreover, there are numerous studies that point out marijuana has more neurotoxic effects in brains that are not fully developed; think younger than 25 years old. In other words, children, teenagers and young adults put their mental health more at risk than older demographics.
And how do these young kids perceive marijuana? Might its legalization lead to irrationally positive perceptions, based on simplistic reasoning? For instance, it can’t be that bad for me, because it’s legal, right?
The question is not theoretical in Washington state. After being legalized in 2012, a study discovered younger teens perceived marijuana to be less harmful than previously and reported increasing usage.
On one hand, we can’t blame younger teens (or teens in general) for dubious judgment, by mere virtue that they are just that: kids. On the other hand, the situation merits attention because they are highly at risk.
Of course, some marijuana activists live in a fantasy land in which the substance can do no harm, and more research must be conducted to explore potential medical uses. The latter is true. Though additional research must also continue to explore harmful effects, and even changing effects, given that cannabis’s potency has skyrocketed from 2 per cent in 1980 to 20 per cent in 2015 (in the U.S.): a tenfold increase.
So says the Canadian Medical Association. Its pleas to Ottawa to ensure that designing marijuana packaging be left to federal officials and health experts rather than producers and distributors are based on the type of sound scientific foundation that was missing from the mouths of tobacco CEO’s testifying in the mid-1990s.
Moving forward with legalization means tragic consequences are inevitable regardless of the positive impacts of the Bill C-45 experiment. The least we can do is ensure that transparency is afforded to all its participants.