Looking North of the Border on Cannabis.

• Position: PUBLIC HEALTH

If U.S. policymakers want to better prioritize public health while legalizing cannabis, they should look to Canada's model for ideas, according to a research report funded by Stanford University.

Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine--who worked as senior policy adviser for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy from 2009-10 under the Obama Administration--commissioned the report in his role as co-director of the Stanford Network on Addiction Policy.

"U.S. policymakers often ask the Stanford Network on Addiction Policy for models of cannabis legalization that prioritize public health, and we realized there aren't good examples domestically," says Humphreys.

"Canada, with a stronger social welfare tradition and history of regulating corporations in the public's interest, was a better place to look than the U.S., where the lessons we learned from regulating the tobacco industry have been forgotten in the legalization of cannabis, which has prioritized profit over public health.

"The potency of the drug is not capped; advertising is ubiquitous and sometimes...