Impacts of drinking-age legislation on alcohol-impaired driving crimes among young people in Canada, 2009-13

Callaghan, Russell C.; Gatley, Jodi M.; Sanches, Marcos; Asbridge, Mark; Stockwell, Tim

doi:10.1111/add.13310

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 39 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…At this time, the possible mechanisms underlying our youth morbidity results are unclear. Our findings can be compared to an established literature suggesting that minimum legal drinking age laws and minimum age of tobacco sales laws in Canada provide some protection for underage youth from both the initiation of tobacco use [48] and a range of population‐based alcohol‐related harms (such as harmful patterns of alcohol use [49], mortality [50], alcohol‐related ED and inpatient hospital visits [51, 52], alcohol‐related driving crimes [53], alcohol‐related motor vehicle collisions [50, 54], criminal victimisation [55] and crime perpetration [54, 56]). However, the possibility cannot be excluded that the cannabis minimum legal sales age laws protected some youth from cannabis‐caused harm.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Impact of Canada's cannabis legalisation on youth emergency department visits for cannabis‐related disorders and poisoning in Ontario and Alberta, 2015–2019

Callaghan

Sanches

Heiden

et al. 2023

Drug and Alcohol Review

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Introduction Although there is momentum towards legalising adult recreational cannabis use worldwide, the extent of youth cannabis‐related harm associated with legalisation is still uncertain. The current study aimed to assess whether the initial implementation of Canada's cannabis legalisation (via the Cannabis Act) on 17 October 2018 might be associated with youth harm, as assessed by emergency department visits for cannabis‐related disorders/poisoning. Methods We used Ontario and Alberta, Canada emergency department data from 1 April 2015 to 31 December 2019. We identified all cannabis‐related disorders/poisoning (ICD‐10 CA: F12.X, T40.7) emergency department visits of youth (n = 13,615), defined as patients younger than the minimum legal cannabis sales age (18 years, Alberta; 19 years, Ontario). Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) models were employed to assess the impact of legalisation on weekly counts of cannabis‐related harms. Results The final SARIMA intervention (step) parameter indicated a post‐legalisation increase of 14.7 (95% confidence interval [CI] 5.0; 24.3, p < 0.01) weekly youth cannabis‐related disorder/poisoning presentations to Ontario/Alberta emergency department settings, equivalent to an increase of 20.0% (95% CI 6.2%; 33.9%). There was no evidence of associations between cannabis legalisation and comparison series of youth alcohol, opioid or appendicitis emergency department episodes. Discussion/Conclusion Our findings require replication and extension but are consistent with the possibility that the implementation of the Cannabis Act was associated with an increase in youth cannabis‐related presentations to Ontario/Alberta emergency departments.

show abstract