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Swiss adult use pilots start to generate data.
As Cannabis Wire has reported, Switzerland has approved a handful of adult use pilot projects, and recently devoted an entire issue of the Federal Office of Public Health’s magazine, Spectra, to the topic of cannabis.
Now, as of this month, meaningful data is starting to come out of these pilots. Specifically, the pilot spearheaded by the city of Zurich and the University of Zurich, titled “Züri Can – Cannabis with Responsibility.” The pilots are specifically designed so that the potential outcomes of legalization can be studied and assessed (i.e., consumption trends).
For this study, participants can legally purchase THC-containing cannabis flower or resin from one of 21 “purchase points.” The study also has 10 cannabis social clubs, run as non-profits that “usually offer the opportunity to consume cannabis on site with other study participants and to exchange ideas with one another,” according to the study site.
“What is special about this study is that three different types of reference points are examined with interventions to promote lower-risk cannabis use,” the study site notes.
This study, which started enrolling in March 2023, will continue until October 2026.
These data points will be updated monthly. Here are some interesting snapshots from the first batch.
- A total of 2,100 people will be able to participate in the Züri Can study, and currently, 1,928 people are enrolled.
- So far, “significantly” more men (80%) have registered to participate in the study than women or nonbinary people.
- Young adults aged 28 to 32 years old are “most frequently represented.”
- And, most participants consume cannabis four times a week, or more often.
In Washington, what do cannabis consumers prioritize? THC.
The state’s Liquor and Cannabis Board provided a “sneak peek” this week into a forthcoming report that includes perspectives from more than 400 cannabis consumers.
One big finding? “Cannabis consumers rated the THC concentration of products as more important when making purchases than did cannabis retail employees,” LCB research manager Sarah Okey wrote in the LCB’s spring newsletter.
What do the employees care about? “Employees placed greater importance on product appearance, how cannabis was manufactured/produced, company/brand recognition, and strain/cultivar name than did non-employees. This finding speaks to differences in product selection among those who work most closely with cannabis on a day-to-day basis. These results highlight a potential avenue for consumer education.”
+ Also out of Washington state: youth cannabis use has remained steady following a big decrease in 2021, according to 2023 Healthy Youth Survey data released this month. And, overall, cannabis consumption among the state’s middle and high school kids is way down since adult use legalization.
This is particularly noteworthy coming out of Washington, considering it is one of the first states in the US (and, really, one of the first jurisdictions in the world) to legalize cannabis for adult use.
Oncologists provide guidance on cannabis.
The American Society of Clinical Oncology published an article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology to “guide clinicians, adults with cancer, caregivers, researchers, and oncology institutions on the medical use of cannabis and cannabinoids.”
With the aim of providing recommendations, a group of experts conducted a systematic literature review on various studies on cannabis and cancer. They note in the article that the “certainty of evidence for most outcomes was low or very low” and that use of cannabis products “by adults with cancer has outpaced the science supporting their clinical use.”
Nonetheless, they suggest “open, nonjudgmental communication between clinicians and adults with cancer about the use of cannabis and/or cannabinoids.”
They suggest that “clinicians should recommend against using cannabis or cannabinoids as a cancer-directed treatment unless within the context of a clinical trial,” however, they do note that cannabis products “may improve refractory, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting when added to guideline-concordant antiemetic regimens.”
