In Canada, pot legalisation poses health and safety challenges

OTTAWA: Canada will end its pot prohibition with the goals of curbing the black market and use by youth, amid concerns around the public health and safety merits of legalisation.

Public health officials contend that smoking cannabis is as harmful as tobacco, but welcome the opportunity legalisation affords for open dialogue.

Police, meanwhile, are scrambling to prepare for a predicted rise in drug-impaired driving and are not yet ready to lay three new charges, which require blood tests within two hours of being pulled over to show above- limit levels of THC, the psychoactive agent in cannabis.

“As a doctor and as a father, I do not agree with the legalisation of recreational cannabis,” said Antonio Vigano, a medical marijuana specialist and research director at the Sante Cannabis clinic in Montreal, citing the risk of increased consumption among young people.

“There are health concerns,” Gillian Connelly of the Ottawa Public Health Agency told AFP.

“But legalisation is creating an opportunity to have discussions about cannabis use, for example, parents starting a conversation with their kids about it. For decades, we’ve said: ‘Just don’t use,’ but that hasn’t worked,” she said.

This failed messaging has helped to make Canadians among the highest per capita users of cannabis, with 4.6 million or one in eight having consumed pot this year (including 18 per cent of Ottawa youth).

There are now hundreds of millions of dollars in funding available for education, and, Connelly said, “a concerted effort to get information out to people about the harms of cannabis.”

“People will also have information about what they’re consuming, with THC levels on the package, in order to make informed decisions about how much is okay for them to consume,” she said.

The government sent a mailer to 14 million households outlining the basics, including health warnings and the need to keep cannabis away from children and pets.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving also partnered with Uber and pot grower Tweed in a campaign against high- driving. Connelly noted a brief spike in hospitalisations after the US state of Colorado legalised cannabis in 2014, attributed to people not realising its potency. — AFP