Grant: Catalyst Grant: Cannabis Research in Urgent Priority Areas

Cannabis use among people with substance use disorders is common and poorly understood. Research to date has focused on investigating the risk of harms from cannabis use. More recently, investigators have suggested that people who use illicit drugs like heroin, cocaine and amphetamines, may be using cannabis as a harm reduction strategy. Our team has documented some benefits of cannabis use among people who use drugs. The benefits include reductions in the frequency of crack cocaine use, and engagement in opioid addiction treatment among others. However, little is known about the type of cannabis, route of administration, dose and dosage that people who use illicit drugs are using for harm reduction, the rates of problematic cannabis use among them, as well as other social and legal consequences of using cannabis. In light of these important gaps in knowledge, we propose to collect data from among marginalized people who use drugs taking part in our studies and catalyze new lines of inquiry into the links between cannabis use, cannabis use disorder, the harms from other drug use, and cannabis legalization in a setting with a community-wide opioid overdose crisis.