Setting the Legal Age for Access to Cannabis in Canada: Bridging Neuroscience, Policy, and Prevention

The United States and Canada are both engaged in cannabis policy reforms with a number of US states legalizing or decriminalizing use, possession, cultivation, and sale, and the Federal Government of Canada poised to legalize cannabis in 2018. Perhaps the most contentious debate in Canada has been about setting the legal minimum age for access to the substance, following the recommendation from Canada’s Federal Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation of age 18 (Government of Canada, 2016), their rationale being that setting the age of access lower will divert youth access from illicit, unregulated markets to a safer and tightly regulated supply, while reducing the numbers of youth charged for possession and entering the criminal justice system. This is particularly important as Canadians aged 18–24 are the demographic with the highest prevalence of cannabis use (Spithoff et al, 2014). The recommendation for age 18 was also intended to harmonize the age for legal access to cannabis with alcohol and tobacco, which is 18 or 19 years across Canada’s provinces and territories