Haines-Saah Rebecca J, Goodyear Trevor, Mudry Tanya, O'Brien Daniel C, Figueras Ana, Jenkins Emily K
Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Canada.
School of Nursing, University of British Columbia, Canada.
Int J Drug Policy. 2025 Apr;138:104474. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2024.104474. Epub 2024 Jun 8.
Cannabis became legal in Canada in 2018. Since then, calls for research to evaluate the impact of legalization on youth have been at the forefront of public and academic discussions. Research addressing these calls has largely focused on issues of risk and harm, with limited attention to the role of social context in shaping youth cannabis use. This paper presents the findings of a study that centered youth perspectives on cannabis use in the context of health and social inequities.
Between 2021 and 2022, we undertook an exploratory and critical qualitative interview study with 56 youth from across Canada who use cannabis and who reported experiences with health or social struggles, broadly self-defined. Our analysis followed a reflexive thematic approach and leveraged theoretical perspectives from critical drug studies to interrogate youths' variegated cannabis use risks and risk environments, whilst facilitating inquiry into their interface with overlapping forms of hardship and inequity.
We developed three interconnected themes: (i) cannabis use risks as contextually situated; (ii) cannabis use as a practice of care; and (iii) cannabis use as a survival tool in connection with trauma and violence. Findings within and across these themes centre on the nexus of intentionality and agency in youth narratives of using cannabis and situates their cannabis use in connection with, and in response to, intersecting health and social inequities.
This study underscores opportunities for a reconsideration or reconceptualization of risks in the context of youth cannabis use, so that approaches to supporting youth who use cannabis are more resonant and credible with those who experience health and social inequities. Findings offer direction for youth cannabis policy and programming, including to decenter individual pathology, support harm reduction goals, and further consider relationships between cannabis use and context, marginalization, and oppression.
大麻于2018年在加拿大合法化。自那时以来，呼吁开展研究以评估合法化对青少年的影响一直是公众和学术讨论的焦点。针对这些呼吁的研究主要集中在风险和危害问题上，而对社会背景在塑造青少年大麻使用方面的作用关注有限。本文介绍了一项以青少年视角为中心，探讨在健康和社会不平等背景下大麻使用情况的研究结果。
在2021年至2022年期间，我们对来自加拿大各地的56名使用大麻且报告有健康或社会问题（广义上自我定义）经历的青少年进行了探索性和批判性定性访谈研究。我们的分析采用了反思性主题方法，并利用批判性药物研究的理论视角来审视青少年多样化的大麻使用风险和风险环境，同时促进对他们与重叠形式的困难和不平等之间关系的探究。
我们得出了三个相互关联的主题：（i）大麻使用风险与具体情境相关；（ii）大麻使用是一种关怀行为；（iii）大麻使用是与创伤和暴力相关的生存工具。这些主题内部和之间的研究结果集中在青少年使用大麻的叙述中的意图和能动性的联系上，并将他们的大麻使用与交叉的健康和社会不平等联系起来，并作为对这些不平等的回应。
本研究强调了在青少年大麻使用背景下重新考虑或重新概念化风险的机会，以便支持使用大麻的青少年的方法对那些经历健康和社会不平等的人更有共鸣且更可信。研究结果为青少年大麻政策和规划提供了方向，包括不再以个体病理为中心、支持减少伤害目标，以及进一步考虑大麻使用与背景、边缘化和压迫之间的关系。
