141st APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

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Recorded Annual Meeting Presentations (RAMP) are now available for purchase.
Only $90 for presenters, $140 for registered attendees and $200 for non-attendees.

Online Program

292976
Collateral consequences: Identifying top policy impacts of marijuana legalization for public health departments


Monday, November 4, 2013 : 10:30 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.

Eric Kuhn, JD, State Services Section, Office of the Colorado Attorney General, Denver, CO
     
Currently eighteen states have medical marijuana and two states have legalized its recreational use. There are a host of collateral consequences that occur as a result of this shift in policy. Public health departments--as well as public health lawyers--must identify and address new public health issues driven by this regulatory shift. Among others, public health departments must adapt educational and messaging campaigns, develop strategies to address greater access to, and diversion of, marijuana, deal with impairment on roads and in workplaces, and must deal with issues that affect youth in particular. They must do this against a backdrop of extremely limited research into marijuana in the form it is being used by the public in medicinal and recreational states. This paper will identify top policy considerations faced by public health in states where marijuana has become legal under state law and will attempt to identify resources or strategies employed in connection with those issues.

Learning Areas:

Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Program planning
Public health or related education
Public health or related laws, regulations, standards, or guidelines
Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
Identify top policy considerations for public health departments that result from a change in marijuana regulatory structure from prohibition to medical or recreational regimes.

Keyword(s): Marijuana

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have represented a public health department in Colorado, which has transitioned from marijuana prohibition to a medical marijuana model and has recently legalized recreational use of the drug. I am also a public health fellow with the National Attorneys General Training and Research Institute, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, performing research into the presentation topic.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 3154.0: Acting Locally: Law and the Local Public Health Workforce