{"id":96525,"date":"2024-10-17T10:09:56","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T14:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=96525"},"modified":"2024-10-17T16:42:05","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T20:42:05","slug":"opinion-michael-armstrong-discusses-changes-to-canadas-medical-cannabis-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2024\/10\/opinion-michael-armstrong-discusses-changes-to-canadas-medical-cannabis-system\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Michael Armstrong discusses changes to Canada\u2019s medical cannabis system"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece, written by Michael Armstrong, Associate Professor of Operations Research at Brock University, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Canada\u00a0legalized recreational cannabis\u00a0use on Oct. 17, 2018, there were concerns about the potential impacts. Would it trigger greater cannabis use, boost economic growth or otherwise affect the country\u2019s\u00a0health, safety and finances?<\/p>\n

Patients already using cannabis legally for medical purposes were especially concerned. They worried that recreational legalization might prompt physicians\u00a0to stop authorizing cannabis treatments. Or that cannabis producers would abandon the small medical market to pursue the larger recreational one.<\/p>\n

After recreational legalization, the medical cannabis system did see declines. Between June 2018 and December 2022,\u00a0the number of registered patients\u00a0fell 32 per cent, while\u00a0product sales fell 29 per cent. Some people thought the medical cannabis system had failed or become obsolete.<\/p>\n

As someone who studies the\u00a0business aspects of cannabis legalization, I wondered about these issues, too. It wasn\u2019t clear how patients, producers or health-care providers would react to recreational legalization. Legal medical use itself had only become accessible a few years earlier.<\/p>\n

Accessing medical cannabis<\/strong><\/p>\n

Canada began allowing\u00a0medical use of cannabis in 1999. But it remained difficult to get until regulations changed during 2014-15.<\/p>\n

The new rules allowed\u00a0any physician to authorize patients to use cannabis. Those patients could then register to buy products online from licensed cannabis producers. Online orders could not exceed a 30-day supply.<\/p>\n

(Instead of buying cannabis products, some patients grew their own plants instead. My research hasn\u2019t examined that.)<\/p>\n

Under this new procedure, the number of patients registering to buy cannabis soared. They grew from\u00a07,914 in June 2014 to 330,344 in June 2018, nearly one per cent of Canada\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

However, registration levels differed greatly between provinces. In June 2018, registrations represented almost three per cent of Alberta\u2019s population, versus only 0.1 per cent of Qu\u00e9bec\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, less than half of registrants bought medical cannabis in any given month. Perhaps they simply didn\u2019t need the full dose. Or maybe they found it\u00a0too expensive, inconvenient\u00a0or ineffective.<\/p>\n

June 2018 was also when the federal government passed its new cannabis legislation. The law took effect in October 2018, when recreational sales of dried cannabis and cannabis oils began. After initial\u00a0product shortages\u00a0were overcome, recreational cannabis\u00a0sales grew rapidly\u00a0as\u00a0more stores opened,\u00a0even during\u00a0the\u00a0COVID-19 pandemic. Consumer choice expanded in December 2019 when edibles and vapes became available.<\/p>\n

This is where\u00a0my new study\u00a0came in. I analyzed government data on patients\u2019 use of Canada\u2019s medical cannabis system between 2017 and 2022. This included how many patients registered, how often they placed orders, and how much cannabis they bought.<\/p>\n

Evolving system usage<\/strong><\/p>\n

I found that as soon as parliament passed the new cannabis law, medical registrations began slowing down, despite recreational legalization still being four months away.<\/p>\n

But the response differed noticeably between provinces. For example, registrations kept growing steadily in Qu\u00e9bec but plummeted rapidly in Alberta. Other provinces were in between.<\/p>\n

My data doesn\u2019t say why those changes occurred. Perhaps Alberta,\u00a0with its copious cannabis clinics, had many patients only mildly interested in using cannabis medically. Conversely, maybe Qu\u00e9bec was still catching up with other provinces on medical use.<\/p>\n

When recreational sales started in October 2018, patient registrations seemed unaffected. Their average purchase sizes didn\u2019t change either. But they bought medical cannabis slightly less often.<\/p>\n

This might have been due to retail convenience. At that time, medical producers and recreational stores were selling similar products: dried cannabis and cannabis oils. So, perhaps some patients started topping up their supplies occasionally at recreational stores but saw no reason to leave the online medical system completely.<\/p>\n

When edibles and other processed products began selling in December 2019, registrations dropped further. But the patients who remained bought medical cannabis slightly more often and in increasingly larger quantities.<\/p>\n

Product selections might explain this patient split. Perhaps producers with good edible products retained their customers and received larger orders from them. Conversely, maybe medical producers offering few edibles lost their patients to the recreational shops and their vast product assortments.<\/p>\n

In summary, Canada\u2019s medical cannabis system experienced big changes after recreational legalization. But it didn\u2019t disappear.<\/p>\n

Will other countries see similar outcomes if they allow recreational cannabis?<\/p>\n

A changing world<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Europe, for example,\u00a0The Netherlands\u00a0is experimenting with recreational sales. Meanwhile,\u00a0Germany has legalized recreational use\u00a0but not retail sales. Will those countries experience medical cannabis changes like Canada did?<\/p>\n

Conversely, some countries barely tolerate even medical use. It is\u00a0very difficult\u00a0to legally obtain medical cannabis\u00a0in the United Kingdom, for example, much like in Canada 20 years ago. And\u00a0France\u00a0has only conducted a few\u00a0medical cannabis trials.<\/p>\n

Other countries, like\u00a0Australia\u00a0and\u00a0New Zealand, are somewhere in between. They\u2019re seeing rapid growth in legal medical use and\u00a0illegal recreational use, but haven\u2019t legalized recreationally. That\u2019s roughly where Canada was 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

Will Canada\u2019s medical and recreational cannabis experiences make these other countries more interested in legalization, or less? Either way, I hope they can learn from our experiences as they chart their own cannabis paths.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Armstrong, Associate Professor of Operations Research at Brock University, wrote a piece recently published in The Conversation about the evolution of medical cannabis sales after recreational legalization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96534,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,6],"tags":[594,4395,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96525"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96543,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96525\/revisions\/96543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}