Cannabis harm reduction: perspectives of women who use and allied social and health-care providers

Abstract

Background

Despite the legalization of cannabis use in Canada in 2018, there remains little research on cannabis harm reduction, particularly for women. Scholarship and public health guidelines tend to focus on the risks of use, emphasizing abstinence rather than harm reduction. Additionally, harm-reduction research and guidelines often lack the perspectives of women who use cannabis and allied social and health-care professionals.

Methods

This community-based participatory research mixed method study explores the perspectives of women who use cannabis and service providers on the Canadian Lower Risk Cannabis Use Guidelines (LRCUG) and a synthesis of scholarship from 2015 to 2020. The research synthesis and the LRCUG were presented for review by participants in two focus groups (n = 11) and respondents to an online survey (n = 19).

Results

Participants described public health guidelines as judgmental in tone, ineffective in conveying useful information, and foregrounding abstinence. Participants also identified shortfalls in the research presented, which did not attend to the social context of cannabis use and cannabinoids’ possible benefits alongside risks.

Conclusion

Participants’ responses affirm that future LRCUGs should focus on informative rather than prescriptive content with meaningful inclusion of people who use cannabis and service professionals as co-creators of knowledge for safer use.

Keywords:

• Cannabis use
• harm reduction
• people who use cannabis
• women

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Allied service providers are health and social care professionals who support women who use cannabis and adopt a harm reduction approach. Additionally, allies, in this case health and social care professionals, engage in practices of alliance with PWUC to end the systemic oppression associated with substance use.

2 We use the term women to be inclusive of cis and trans women, and gender diverse folx. However, we have retained the sex markers of female and male when reporting on literature exploring sex differences and when participants use these terms.

3 This research received ethics approval from Interdisciplinary Committee on Ethics in Human Research # 20211416-SW at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

4 This study’s focus groups were conducted in St. John’s Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The online survey extended the respondent pool to the Atlantic Canada region.

5 The online survey is included in the supplemental documents.

6 The online survey had the following security features: prevention of multiple submissions, bot detection, and security scan monitoring.

7 The number beside ‘participant’ represents the anonymized identifier for each of the 30 study participants.

Additional information

Funding

Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Use Matters (CRISM Atlantic) Canadian Institutes of Health Research.