A changing attitude in society towards the use of cannabis poses a series of policy challenges for Australia’s elected officials, a new study done by a team of academics from the University of Queensland and the University of New South Wales has revealed.
The researchers — Vivian Chiu, Gary Chan, Wayne Hall, Leanne Hides, and Janni Leung — pored over 19 years’ worth of data drawn from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey, collected during a time when cannabis use was made legal for medicinal purposes.
These surveys unlocked attitudes towards drug use and particularly the use of illicit drugs. It was started in 1998, with seven waves of the survey being used in this study.
People in specific age groups were more likely than others to try the plant, according to the analysis of the survey data.
“We observed larger increases in all cannabis use intentions among people born in the 1950s to 1960s than in those who were born before or after. As emerging adults, people in this generation experienced a decade in which the counterculture movement flourished from the mid-1960 s to mid-1970 s across many Western countries including Australia,” the research paper says.
“The social movement was marked by a revolution in social norms that were positive towards cannabis use. Living through this period appears to have influenced the attitudes about cannabis for this generation, making them more accepting of cannabis use than adults who were members of earlier or more recent birth cohorts.”
People born in the 1990s may be catching up with folks who were born much earlier in their willingness to entertain experimenting with or using marijuana.
“This appears consistent with a previous study that has found the association between medical cannabis legalisation and initiation of cannabis use and more frequent use among youths,” the researchers observe.
Overseas trends in the legalisation of the drug are one reason the researchers believe attitudes towards the use of cannabis began shifting in Australia from 2007 onwards.
There was also coverage in Australia in 2012 of the growth of the medicinal use of cannabis in the US, the research paper says, and that prompted a broader discussion in traditional and social media of the drug’s medical usage.
A series of policy implications are raised by the paper’s authors, and these include the observation that an increase in the plant’s usage may occur in Australia if trends of cannabis use following legalisation in Canada and the US are to be taken as a guide.
Other lessons for Australia from the overseas experience include the move by states in the US to legalise cannabis to reduce the black market, which increased accessibility and reduced prices.
“When cannabis use becomes fully legalised, a for-profit cannabis industry will have a commercial interest in expanding the number of daily consumers,” the research paper says. “The profitability of the enormous cannabis markets will give the industry sufficient resources to resist public health regulations, which seems to be happening with the legal cannabis industry in the US.”
The authors of the study said that policymakers can learn from the manner in which they regulate tobacco and alcohol in order to get an appropriate regulatory framework in place for the legalisation of cannabis.
These include taxing, limiting the marketing of cannabis, and plain packaging of cannabis products in order to make usage less attractive to younger people.
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