Dr. Elaine Hyshka

Turning failure into success: What does the case of Western Australia tell us about Canadian cannabis policymaking?

Published by Policy Studies

2009 Cannabis policy in Canada is a puzzling affair. Since the 1960s and as recently as 2006, several policy windows have opened promising evidence-based cannabis law reform only to be slammed shut before achieving meaningful change. This ‘saga of promise, hesitation, and retreat’ has motivated Canadian cannabis researchers to investigate the reasons behind this policy inertia. These single-jurisdiction analyses have resulted in interesting yet necessarily tenuous findings. Fischer's (1999) Policy Studies article suggests the need for an analysis of Canadian cannabis policy in comparative context and offers Australia as a point of departure. This article addresses this analytic task by examining two recent case studies in cannabis policy. Specifically, borrowing Kingdon's (1995) concept of a policy window, it contrasts Canada's failure to decriminalise minor cannabis offences between 2001 and 2006 with Western Australia's successful decriminalisation of cannabis possession and production for personal use between 2001 and 2004. In particular, it appears that a lack of support from law enforcement and cannabis users, conflicting evidence and risk associated with a lack of an evaluation plan all combined with a weakened electoral mandate for the government to contribute to a perception that cannabis decriminalisation was not politically feasible. Additional variables worthy of further inquiry are also discussed.

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01442870902899962

Prospects for scaling‐up supervised injection facilities in Canada: the role of evidence in legal and political decision‐making

Published by Addiction

2013 North America's first supervised injection facility—Insite—opened in Vancouver in 2003 under a special federal legal exemption. Insite has faced significant political and legal opposition, which culminated in a recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling that ordered the federal Minister of Health to extend the facility's exemption and cited evidence that the facility is life-preserving and does not increase public disorder. Officials in several other cities have initiated or accelerated preparations for new facilities due to speculation that ...

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.12064/full

Perceived unmet need and barriers to care amongst street‐involved people who use illicit drugs

Published by Drug and Alcohol Review

2016 Most (82%) participants reported unmet need for one or more services during the past year. Odds of reporting one or more unmet needs were elevated amongst participants reporting substantial housing instability (adjusted odds ratio= 2.37; 95% confidence interval 1.19–4.28) and amongst participants meeting criteria for drug dependence (adjusted odds ratio= 1.22; 95% confidence interval 1.03–1.50), even after adjustment for sociodemographic covariates. Structural, rather than motivational barriers were the most ...

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dar.12427/full

Needle exchange and the HIV epidemic in Vancouver: lessons learned from 15 years of research

Published by International Journal of Drug Policy

2012 During the mid-1990s, Vancouver experienced a well characterized HIV outbreak among injection drug users (IDU) and many questioned how this could occur in the presence of a high volume needle exchange program (NEP). Specific concerns were fuelled by early research demonstrating that frequent needle exchange program attendees were more likely to be HIV positive than those who attended the NEP less frequently. Since then, some have misinterpreted this finding as evidence that NEPs are ineffective or potentially harmful...

URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395912000527

Applying a social determinants of health perspective to early adolescent cannabis use–An overview

Published by Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy

2013 Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in the world. Although the risk of problematic cannabis use is relatively low, the lifetime prevalence of dependence is greater than for all other illicit drugs. As such, the population burden of problematic cannabis use warrants attention. Many health and psychosocial risks associated with cannabis use are exacerbated or predicted by initiation of cannabis use in early adolescence and early adolescent users are more vulnerable to negative developmental outcomes, longer ...

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09687637.2012.752434

A common public health-oriented policy framework for cannabis, alcohol and tobacco in Canada?

Published by Canadian Journal of Public Health

2015 Support for a public health approach to cannabis policy as an alternative to prohibition and criminalization is gaining momentum. Recent drug policy changes in the United States suggest growing political feasibility for legal regulation of cannabis in other North American jurisdictions. This commentary discusses the outcomes of an interdisciplinary policy meeting with Canadian experts and knowledge users in the area of substance use interventions. The meeting explored possibilities for applying cross- ...

URL: http://search.proquest.com/openview/64eb150460704c873b6a13019826e60d/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=47649

‘It's more about the heroin’: injection drug users' response to an overdose warning campaign in a Canadian setting

Published by Addiction

2013 Although nearly all participants were aware of the warning, their recollections of the message and the timing of its release were obscured by on-going social interactions within the drug scene focussed on heroin quality. Many injection drug users reported seeking the high potency heroin and nearly all reported no change in overdose risk behaviours. Responses to the warning were shaped by various social, economic and structural forces that interacted with individual behaviour and undermined efforts to promote behavioural change, including sales tactics employed by dealers, poverty, the high cost and shifting quality of available heroin, and risks associated with income-generating activities. Individual-level factors, including emotional suffering, withdrawal, entrenched injecting routines, perceived invincibility and the desire for intense intoxication also undermined risk reduction messages.

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.12151/full