TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2021//
TI  - Impacts of Canada's cannabis legalization on police-reported crime among youth: early evidence
JO  - Addiction
A1  - Callaghan, Russell C.
A1  - Vander Heiden, Julia
A1  - Sanches, Marcos
A1  - Asbridge, Mark
A1  - Hathaway, Andrew
A1  - Kish, Stephen J.
SP  - ePub
EP  - ePub
VL  - ePub
IS  - ePub
N2  - AIMS: Canada's 2018 Cannabis Act allows youth (age 12-17 years) to possess up to 5 g of dried cannabis (or equivalent) for personal consumption/sharing. This study assessed whether the Cannabis Act was associated with changes in police-reported cannabis offences among youth in Canada. <br><br>DESIGN: Time series model using national daily criminal incident data from January 1, 2015-December 31, 2018 from the Canadian Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR-2). Seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average time series models, stratified by sex, assessed the relations between legalization and youth cannabis-related offences. SETTING: Canada, 2015-2018. CASES: Police-reported cannabis-related offenses among youth age 12-17 years (male, n = 32 178; female, n = 9001). MEASUREMENTS: Outcomes: police-reported cannabis-related crimes, property crimes, and violent crimes. Covariate: calendar-month. <br><br>FINDINGS: For females, legalization was associated with a step-effect decrease of 4.56 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.32, 5.81; P < 0.001) police-reported cannabis-related criminal offences per day, an effect equivalent to a 64.6% (standard error [SE] = 33.5%) reduction. For males, legalization was associated with a drop of 12.73 (95% CI = 8.82, 16.64; P < 0.001) cannabis-related offences per day, equaling a decrease of 57.7% (SE = 22.6%). <br><br>RESULTS were inconclusive as to whether there were associations between cannabis legalization and patterns of property crimes or violent crimes. <br><br>CONCLUSIONS: Implementation of the Cannabis Act in Canada in 2018 appears to have been associated with decreases of 55%-65% in cannabis-related crimes among male and female youth.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0965-2140
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/add.15535
ID  - ref1
ER  -