Public health concerns regarding pregnant women’s health after the enactment of the Cannabis Act in Canada (CAC), and the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, calls for a contemporary assessment. Our study focuses on examining how the CAC and the pandemic are associated with the monthly prevalence rates of cannabis-, all drug-, and alcohol-related diagnoses disorders among pregnant women in Quebec.
We conducted a retrospective population-based study drawing on data from the Québec Chronic Disease Surveillance System. Using time-series regression analyses, we assessed changes associated with the CAC (October 2018) and the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2020) in the age-standardized monthly prevalence rate of cannabis-, all drug-, and alcohol-related disorders of pregnant women aged 15 years to 49 per 100,000 population between 2010 and 2022.
Before the CAC, the prevalence rate of cannabis-related diagnosed disorders significantly increased each month by 1% (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.00 – 3.00). After the CAC, there were significant increases of 25% (95% CI: 0.01-54.00) of cannabis-related diagnosed disorders. No significant changes were observed for all drug-and alcohol-related diagnosed disorders associated with the CAC. Increases in the prevalence of diagnosed prenatal cannabis-related disorders before and after the CAC, echo public health concerns associated with potential cannabis-related harms in this population including long-term impact on offspring children. In Quebec, a more comprehensive approach to better understand and prevent increases in this outcome should be applied.
José Ignacio Nazif-Munoz is Assistant Professor at Service sur les dépendances, in the Faculté de médecine et des sciences de la santé, Université de Sherbrooke. He completed his BA (Sociology) (1999) at Universidad de Chile, and PhD (Sociology) (2016) at McGill University. He did postdoctoral training at the Institute of Health and Policy-McGill University (2017), and at the T. H. Chan School of Public Health-Harvard University (2019). His key research interest lays on understanding the interaction between the diffusion, design, and implementation of policies regulating alcohol and cannabis consumption on vulnerable populations.