Grant: Catalyst Grant: Pop. Health Intervention Research on Legalization of Cannabis

The Canadian government is committed to the legalization of recreational use of cannabis, making Canada only the second country in the world to do so after Uruguay. While the legal and public health implications of legalization are complex, a major concern among Canadians revolves around impaired driving by cannabis, and appropriately so. Injuries and fatalities due to traffic crashes represent an enormous burden on global health, with impaired driving by alcohol and other drugs an established factor associated with morbidity and estimated to be implicated in a third of all fatal traffic crashes. To achieve a good understanding of the situation, we will need to monitor negative consequences associated with impaired driving by cannabis such as crashes, arrests, and convictions as well as other variables that might help explain changes in these consequences (e.g., successful prosecution). Some of the consequences and explanatory data are already contained in established data platforms that are analysis ready. However, there is likely a trove of relevant information that is not included in current databases, such as that documented in written reports. Additionally, relevant information may be lost due to incomplete documentation procedures. This Canadian Institutes of Health Research catalyst project aims at understanding how consequences and explanatory variables will evolve with legalization of cannabis by informing the development of a monitoring strategy for impaired driving by cannabis. The ultimate long-term goal would be the development of a platform that provides stakeholders, policy makers, decision makers, and knowledge users the information (e.g., via annual reports) to better understand the impact of legalization and deterrence and preventative strategies in the general population but also as a function of individual driver characteristics, such as age, sex, and geographic location.