Raising Awareness About Cannabis Use: A Community-Informed Approach

NWAC health department project aims to reduce rates of problematic cannabis use.

NWAC is working on a three-year project entitled “A Community-Informed Approach to Cannabis Public Health Education and Awareness,” which is being funded by Health Canada’s Substance Use and Addictions Program.

This project entails working with urban, rural, and remote Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) communities to identify the priorities of Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people and to develop culturally safe resources related to cannabis. In addition to addressing the needs and priorities of our target audience, these resources will raise awareness and literacy around cannabis. The goal is to help Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people make informed decisions about cannabis use.

During our preliminary work on this topic, NWAC received feedback through engagement sessions with First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and gender-diverse people , who referenced cannabis in relation to harm reduction in some form or another. For example, in the Inuit community, questions were posed about using cannabis as an alternative to opioids (“cannabis can be used as an alternative to fentanyl” and “cannabis is better than oxy’s”). Inuit would like to know if cannabis is a viable option over opioids and could be covered under their health care benefits.

In drawing a connection to cannabis use and harm reduction, First Nations Elders noticed that cannabis is considered ‘less harmful’ than alcohol, and thus a more acceptable substance to use. Within a First Nations context (both on and off reserve), cannabis can be used as replacement therapy and to ease the burden of and physical transition from detoxing or coming off of other ‘hard drugs’ (“the dispensary owner helped people who used needles for their drug use to detox using edibles[and] it worked”).

In the short term, NWAC intends to create culturally safe, gender-based, trauma-informed cannabis public education and awareness resources. These resources will help Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people make informed decisions about cannabis use that best meet their distinct needs and priorities.

Our long-term goal is to reduce the rates of problematic cannabis use among this population group.