Funding statement

This workshop is funded by the Society for the Study of Addiction, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and the Portuguese General Directorate for Intervention on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies (SICAD)

Aims and objectives

Cannabis is used by 200 million people each year, but there are no standardized, universally agreed upon methods to quantify cannabis consumption. This limits our ability to interpret and synthesize evidence on cannabis, and to develop guidelines that can inform consumers on how different levels of cannabis use can be associated with addiction and other adverse health outcomes.

These problems have become increasingly severe and urgent in recent years. In many international jurisdictions, the illicit legal status of cannabis is transitioning towards legal products for medicinal and recreational purposes. As a result, cannabis products, their potency and methods of administrations are undergoing significant and rapid changes as they diversify and expand (e.g. edibles, cannabis concentrates, and the use of rigs and vaporizers as well as joints, blunts, bongs, and pipes).

We aim to address these pressing global issues, via bringing together the most recent evidence and multidisciplinary expertise from addiction scientists, clinicians, and international agencies such as the EMCDDA. To address the complex issues surrounding the measurement of cannabis use, we need to draw on a range of international perspectives, including regions where legal cannabis markets have emerged as well as countries where cannabis remains illegal.

Aim 1: Identify and disseminate key challenges in measuring cannabis use from an international and multidisciplinary perspective

Aim 2: Launch the development of an International Cannabis Toolkit: a standardized, internationally relevant tool for measuring cannabis use in research and clinical settings