With over 20 years of experience in public health, Mrs. Gutierrez contributed to development and implementation of preventive services adapted to vulnerable populations (street youth, injection drugs users). Since 2017, she focused her efforts on cannabis legislative framework, development of tools intended for professionals as well as harm reduction interventions.

Issue: Based on new scientific evidence on cannabis-related health risks and harms, in 2022, Fisher et al. updated Canada’s Lower-Risk Cannabis Use Guidelines (LRCUG). Building on this work and consulting with emerging adults (18-24 yrs. old), as they are the age group with the highest rates of cannabis use in both Quebec and Canada, Montreal’s Public Health Department alongside community-based organization, Groupe de recherche et d’intervention psychosociale (GRIP), adapted the LRCUG in order to tailor harm reduction messages to this target audience.

Project: Updated LRCUG were pre-tested with young cannabis users to assess comprehension, relevance and applicability in order to create a credible and validated harm-reduction toolkit. In Spring 2024, 6 focus groups were conducted with French and English-speaking cannabis users aged 18-24: 4 of these were groups with daily and regular users and 2 were with French occasional users.

Outcomes: 33 cannabis users participated in focus groups and were asked to assess 11 updated guidelines. Regardless of language spoken, most participants wanted detailed, factual and concise information on both risks and benefits associated with cannabis use. However, the tone and wording of some messages were perceived as moralizing for participants from daily/regular user groups. Regular users stressed the importance of educating youth on the principle of Set and Setting. In the absence of a THC standard unit, guidelines inviting youth to ‘start low, go slow’ are confusing and difficult to apply. Recommending using legally-regulated cannabis products becomes challenging when i) consumers aged 18-20 are excluded from accessing legal market and ii) youth access popular products unavailable in the Quebec legal market through multiple unregulated supply sources (e.g. online, street dealers).
Consulting cannabis users highlighted the necessity for meaningful involvement of this heterogeneous population, as well as community-based organizations, in knowledge translation of LRCUG.