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• Canada's cannabis legalization sought to decrease cannabis-related crime. • Study used Canadian adult police-reported criminal incidents from 2015 to 2021. • Cannabis legalization was successful in reducing cannabis-related crime among adults. • No spillover effects of legalization on adult property or violent crimes. A central goal of the Cannabis Act (October 17, 2018) – Canada's national cannabis legalization framework – aimed to reduce cannabis-related criminalization and consequent impact on the Canadian criminal justice system. We assessed whether Canada's cannabis legalization was associated with changes in adult police-reported cannabis-related, property, or violent criminal incidents. Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) time series models evaluated relations between legalization and adult cannabis-related, property, and violent crimes, using criminal incident data from the Canadian Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR-2; January 1, 2015–December 31, 2021). National police-reported adult cannabis-related offenses (n = 247,249), property crimes (n = 2,299,777), and violent crimes (n = 1,903,762). Implementation of the Cannabis Act was associated with decreases in adult police-reported cannabis-related offenses: females, −13.2 daily incidents (95% CI, −16.4; −10.1; p < 0.001) – a reduction of 73.9% [standard error (se), 30.6%]; males, −69.4 daily offenses (95% CI, −81.5; −57.2; p < 0.001) – a drop of 83.2% (se, 21.2%). Legalization was not associated with significant changes in the adult property-crime or violent-crime series. Our findings suggest that Canada's cannabis legalization was successful in reducing cannabis-related criminalization among adults. There was also a lack of evidence for spillover effects of cannabis legalization on adult property or violent crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to review the results and limitations of studies of injury risks associated with cannabis and cocaine use. Three types of fatal and non-fatal injuries are considered: injuries due to collisions, intentional injuries and injuries in general. Four types of studies were reviewed: (I) laboratory studies, (II) descriptive and analytic epidemiological studies on the prevalence of cannabis or cocaine use through drug testing of those injured, (III) studies of non-clinical samples, and (IV) studies of clinical samples of drug users. The research that utilized drug tests showed similar proportions testing positive for cannabis in fatal and non-fatal injury groups, and for collisions, violence and injuries in general. By contrast, large differences in the average proportions testing positive for cocaine were found among these same injury groups. For example, 28.7% of people with intentional injuries (primarily homicides) tested positive for cocaine, while 4.5% of injured drivers tested positive. Studies of non-clinical samples have shown that both cannabis and cocaine use are related to intentional injuries and injuries in general. Results indicate higher risk for all types of injuries among cannabis and cocaine clients in treatment. Strengths and limitations of the different types of studies are discussed. More rigorous studies are needed which should focus on ruling out alternative explanations for relationships between drug use and injuries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]