Citation

van Ours JC. World Psychiatry 2020; 19(2): 196-197.

Affiliation

Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, World Psychiatric Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/wps.20743

PMID

32394555

Abstract

There are many arguments in favor of legalization of recreational use of cannabis. Legalization removes incentives for criminal organizations to be involved, allows for quality control, raises tax revenues, and facilitates researchers to collect and analyze high‐quality data.

Hall and Lynskey1 provide an interesting overview of the public health consequences of legalizing recreational cannabis use. With this legalization, some US states have become frontrunners in international cannabis policy. Research‐wise and policy‐wise, there are two main issues, i.e. how legalization affects cannabis use and how cannabis use affects health. My reading of Hall and Lynskey’s paper is that there are quite a few uncertainties regarding both is­sues.

From the research viewpoint, any study that aims to investigate determinants and consequences of cannabis use is hampered by the lack of a suitable experimental set‐up. It is difficult to imagine research on legalization of cannabis use or cannabis use itself implemented through a randomized controlled trial. As far as I am aware, there is only one such study available2. This was conducted over a period of 98 days in Toronto, Canada, and aimed to explore the re­lationship between cannabis use and work­place behavior. ...

Language: en