Outdated tools, underestimated harm: Modernizing cannabis surveillance in a post-legalization era

Canada's 2018 legalization of non-medical cannabis was positioned as a public health initiative, intended to shift cannabis use from criminalization to regulation. Since then, cannabis access and consumption have grown significantly but the systems used to monitor cannabis-related harms have not kept pace. Most national surveys remain focused on patterns of use rather than indicators of harm. Cannabis use disorder (CUD), a clinical condition with well-established diagnostic criteria, remains rarely measured, often misclassified, and largely absent from policy discussions.

Canada's current surveillance tools are not equipped to detect or track CUD. Major national surveys rely on outdated DSM-IV frameworks, use skip logic that excludes individuals with lower levels of use, and fail to assess key symptoms such as loss of control, functional impairment, or withdrawal. The primary mental health surveillance tool does not align with DSM-5 standards. Administrative health records often obscure CUD due to underdiagnosis, inconsistent coding practices, and the absence of validated case-finding tools. High-risk populations are often excluded from survey samples. As a result, CUD is underdetected, undertreated, and underfunded across Canada's healthcare and policy systems.

Canada urgently needs a modernized surveillance infrastructure that reflects current diagnostic standards, improves the sensitivity of survey tools, incorporates equity metrics, and enables the reliable detection of cannabis use disorder in clinical data.