Recontextaulizing Cannabis Research
Recontextaulizing Cannabis Research
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Issue Date
2025-11-19
Authors
Theriault, Michael
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Abstract
Cannabis is widely consumed among Canadian emerging adults, yet research examining its risks has been fundamentally decontextualized. While studies link specific use patterns to cognitive deficits, psychosis, and cannabis use disorder, they cannot explain why these patterns emerge, for whom they are most harmful, or how life circumstances influence use trajectories. This decontextualization reflects a deliberate historical trajectory spanning colonial epistemologies, racist drug policies, and restricted research paradigms. This literature review traces cannabis history from Ayurvedic medicine through British colonization, which displaced traditional knowledge with Western empirical science, to 20th-century American prohibition and the War on Drugs, which weaponized cannabis policy against minority populations while constraining research to focus exclusively on harms. Contemporary quantitative research successfully identifies risk factors but isolates variables from lived realities. Qualitative research reveals that cannabis use is embedded in personal motivations (self-medication, stress relief), social roles (student, parent), and environmental factors (legalization, COVID-19), yet examines static contexts rather than how these evolve over time. This review argues that understanding how emerging adults' cannabis attitudes and behaviours develop requires a narrative approach capturing use as a dynamic, contextualized process. The proposed study will conduct semi-structured interviews with 20 emerging adults in Calgary, exploring how use patterns emerge and change through shifting contexts. This approach has significant clinical implications, enabling counsellors to situate client cannabis use within lived contexts and develop effective, context-sensitive harm reduction interventions.
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Keywords
cannabis , emerging adults , narrative , risk factors