Just 10% of users consumed a third of all the cannabis used in Canada in 2018, according to a study headed by a Northern Medical Program professor.

Dr. Russ Callaghan and his team looked at data from the 2018 National Cannabis Survey, which assessed patterns of cannabis use among Canadians at least 15 years old.

"The findings are similar to those in the alcohol field, where we have found that a small subgroup of drinkers usually consumes the majority of alcohol in the population," Callaghan said.

The team also found that males reported consuming 60 per cent of the cannabis consumed and males 15-34 years old disproportionately represented in the heaviest-using subgroups.

"This is the first study to identify this pattern, and it may be important for public-health strategies in designing interventions to reduce cannabis-related harms," Callaghan said.

He said future studies will look at characteristics of the heaviest-using cannabis user group, as well as assess how cannabis-related harms are distributed in Canadian society across individuals using different quantities.

In alcohol-related studies have found that five to 10 per cent of drinkers consume a majority of the volume.

There is also some evidence that most of the alcohol-related harms in societies are not found in the group of heaviest-drinking individuals, but rather in the much more numerous low-to-moderate-drinking groups.

The finding has been used as the basis for developing interventions for the entire population rather than on strategies designed for the heaviest-using subgroups.

"At this time, we don't know if the same pattern exists in relation to cannabis as it does for alcohol," Callaghan said.

The team was made up of researchers from UNBC, the University of British Columbia, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria.

California’s hopes of reinvigorating the state’s longtime “compassion programs,” which for decades provided medical cannabis to the sick for free, now rest in the hands of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The bill in question, SB-34 or the “Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary Compassionate Care Act,” would create a mechanism to exempt compassionate cannabis programs from the hefty cultivation and excise taxes that the state started levying on all cannabis producers under new adult-use regulations in 2018. It would also allow licensed retailers and delivery services to facilitate donation programs for medical patients.

Under SB-34, the cannabis donated to medical patients would still face all the other burdens that marijuana products in California face, such as being in the track-and-trace system and passing strict lab testing standards. However, operators of those compassionate cannabis programs say the bill is a good start towards making their operations more feasible again. The programs currently have to pay about 25% taxes, despite the fact that they bring in no revenue.

The bill passed the California State Assembly and State Senate in early September. The vote was unanimous in both houses. The bill has now sat on the governor’s desk for over two weeks. Newsom has until mid-October to either sign the bill into law or veto it.

“We don’t know what the Governor will do, but we are making a strong case to him that SB 34 is critical to ensure people can continue to access their medicine,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Scott Weiner, told Cannabis Now in a statement. “Without a tax exemption, compassion programs will continue to shut down, and low-income people will either not get their medicine or be forced onto the illicit market. We need to ensure access.”

Last week, Wiener joined San Francisco medical cannabis activists at one of the greatest landmarks of the medical marijuana movement: Dennis Peron’s Castro Castle, where activists worked to pass California’s medical marijuana law, Proposition 215, back in 1996.

As Weiner took the mic, a small dog started barking with the applause. Weiner told the dog to bark at the governor and get him to sign the bill.

“An entire generation of activists” risked their own safety to provide medicine to people who were getting sick and dying of AIDS, Wiener told the crowd. “We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.”

Weiner went on to note that activists such as Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary, the bill’s namesakes, built the political momentum that led to legal cannabis. They did so by giving away cannabis to those in need for free, proving through generosity that they could not be equated to “drug dealers” and that cannabis could be healing.

Weiner said that he doubts any Californians who voted in favor of legalization realized they would be creating roadblocks to access to medicine for sick, low-income people.

The way California NORML explains how California’s compassionate programs came to face extinction: “Due to an oversight in how Proposition 64 [California’s adult-use legalization bill] was drafted, these not-for-profit donation programs that have been serving medical cannabis patients for decades are now being forced to pay taxes meant for businesses, which are forcing these charity programs to shut down.”

Cal NORML told Cannabis Now in an email they haven’t had any assurances that the governor will sign the bill and people should continue to contact his office.

Last year, a similar bill sponsored by Weiner passed both houses of the state legislature and landed on the desk of then-Gov. Jerry Brown. Brown vetoed the bill out of a concern that it would encourage illicit market distribution of cannabis.

One of the oldest compassion programs in the state belongs to its oldest dispensary, Berkeley Patients Group. BPG Vice-President Etienne Fontan has been a first-hand witness to giving sick people free marijuana for 20 years, but suddenly he says it’s harder than it’s been in a long time.

“We have dealt with years of setbacks post-Prop 64 for patients and the need for compassion is needed now more than ever,” Fontan told Cannabis Now. “We spent 20 years compassionately giving in our community and with cancer rates at 1 in 2, it’s a necessity for low-income patients in dire need, today.”

In reality, the delays in the governor’s signature are just making it harder for Fontan to provide for as many people as possible.

“We cannot await another politician’s cruelty, we need the governor to sign this legislation to put patients’ minds at ease so they can focus on their healing instead of worrying where they will have to go to find their medicine,” he said. “Berkeley Patients Group has the word ‘patients’ in the name for a reason and we will always stand for those who are most in need and we need the laws and politicians to reflect the will of the voters but also the compassion that Prop 215 was created for.”

A new study funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice sought to determine the effect of the change in legal status of cannabis on crimes rates.

Eleven states and the District of Columbia have legalised cannabis. The study, which looked at legalisation and sales of recreational or broad medical purposes cannabis in Colorado and Washington, found minimal to no effect on rates of violent and property crimes in those states.

The study, by researchers at Washington State University, Stockton University, and the University of Utah, appears in Justice Quarterly, a publication of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

The grand experiment

Ruibin Lu, assistant professor of criminal justice at Stockton University, who is first author on a paper about the study, said: “In many ways, the legalisation of cannabis constitutes a grand ongoing experiment into how a major public policy initiative does or does not accomplish its expected outcomes.

“Given the likelihood of more states legalising recreational cannabis, we felt it was important to apply robust empirical methods to parse out the effects of this action on crime in the first years after legalisation.”

Previous studies have reported mixed and inconclusive results on how legalising cannabis affects crime. Some politicians and advocacy groups have used these data to support their positions for and against legalisation.

In this new study, researchers used methods that they say are more rigorous than those used in previous research (i.e., quasi-experimental approaches that more closely emulate experiments and provide stronger evidence) to determine whether the legalisation of cannabis led to changes in crime rates.

Researchers chose Colorado and Washington because they were the two earliest states to legalise growing, processing, and selling cannabis commercially for recreational use.

Cannabis for medical and other purposes

Researchers compared monthly crime rates in Colorado and Washington to crime rates in 21 states that have not legalised cannabis use for recreational or broad medical purposes at the state level.

Crime rates came from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report from 1999 to 2016 for agencies that reported complete data during this period. The study calculated how violent and property crimes changed for Colorado and Washington after the legalisation and retail sale and compared the changes to what happened in states that had not legalised cannabis.

In general, the study found no statistically significant long-term effects of recreational cannabis laws or the initiation of retail sales on violent or property crime rates in either Colorado or Washington, with the exception of a decline in burglary rates in Washington. This suggests that the legalisation and sales of cannabis for recreational or broad medical purposes have had minimal to no effect on major crimes in these states.

The study also chronicled some increases in crime in the two states immediately following legalisation of cannabis – with property crime rates rising in Colorado and Washington, and aggravated assault rates rising in Washington. But in both states, these increases were short-lived and did not reflect permanent shifts.

The study’s authors note that because they examined changes in serious crime, they cannot address the effect of legalising cannabis on other types of crime (e.g., crimes related to driving under the influence of cannabis). In addition, they say they cannot rule out the possibility that cannabis laws might have different effects on different types of communities within a state.

Dale W. Willits, assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at Washington State University, one of the co-authors of the study, said: “As the nationwide debate about legalisation, the federal classification of cannabis under the Controlled Substances Act, and the consequences of legalisation for crime continues, it is essential to centre that discussion on studies that use contextualised and robust research designs with as few limitations as possible.

“This is but one study and legalisation of cannabis is still relatively new, but by replicating our findings, policymakers can answer the question of how legalisation affects crime.”

Last month, Canberra became the first city in Australia to legalize marijuana for recreational use. While many places around the world have legalized medicinal marijuana, there just hasn't been the same appetite for recreational pot, at least not yet.

That's what makes the vote by the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), where Canberra is located, to legalize recreational pot such a big move. The question now is whether it will lead to legalization for the whole country. 

Canberra is similar to many U.S. states

The ACT will permit individuals to use pot as well as grow it. The law takes effect Jan. 31, 2020. As in the U.S., marijuana remains illegal at the federal level, meaning that federal laws could still pose problems for cannabis customers in Canberra and the ACT.  In the U.S., the federal government has turned a blind eye to what individual states have been doing on marijuana, but there's no guarantee that the same will happen in Australia.

Will legalization at the federal level be next?

It has been more than three years since legislation was passed to legalize medical marijuana in Australia. There isn't any movement to suggest that the legalization of cannabis for recreational purposes is on the horizon anytime soon. But there's likely a lot of interest in doing so; data from a 2016 report indicates that cannabis was used by one in 10 Australians over the past year, a number that's likely to have grown since. 

A possible catalyst in Australia would be if New Zealand votes to make pot legal next year. With Canada and a number of U.S. states having done so -- and nearby New Zealand potentially being next -- Australia would have ample case studies to decide whether it wants to follow.

But recent polling numbers suggest the vote could be very close in New Zealand, with 52% opposed to legalization. 

One company that could benefit significantly

Aphria (NYSE:APHA) made an investment in Australian-based Althea in early 2018 and could stand to benefit if legalization comes to pass. 

The investment gives Aphria access to a market that could become more lucrative than ever. Earlier this year, Althea obtained a manufacturing license in the country, making it even easier for Aphria to tap into the market since it could simply help coordinate production without having to ship products directly into the country. 

Growing around the globe has been one way that cannabis companies like Aphria have looked to obtain first-mover advantages, securing deals with various companies. In Aphria's case, it could pay off in a big way. Even if Canberra is the only major city in Australia that legalizes pot, it could bring in a lot of pot tourists, not unlike what has happened in Colorado and in other parts of the U.S. that have legalized marijuana. On its own, Canberra's population (around 400,000 people) won't make it a hot market, but it could become a hub for those in the Oceanic region, giving them fairly close access to legal pot.

Although Aphria would love to be able to sell recreational products in the U.S., the Australian market would be a great consolation prize -- and make it very appealing to investors.