Canadian Guidelines on Cannabis Use Disorder Among Older Adults.

Background: Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD) is an emerging and diverse challenge among older adults.

Methods: The Canadian Coalition for Seniors' Mental Health, with financial support from Health Canada, has produced evidence-based guidelines on the prevention, identification, assessment, and treatment of this form of substance use disorder.

Conclusions: Older adults may develop CUD in the setting of recreational and even medical use.

Broad Thinking: An Interview With Harold Kalant.

In this interview, Harold Kalant, M.D., Ph.

Intravenous self-administration of alcohol in rats-problems with translation to humans.

Alcohol is consumed orally by humans, and oral self-administration has been successfully modeled in laboratory animals. Over the last several years, attempts have been made to develop a procedure for the reliable intravenous (IV) self-administration of alcohol in rodents. IV self-administration would provide a better tool for investigating neurobiological mechanisms of alcohol reinforcement and dependence because confounding factors associated with oral self-administration, such as variations in orosensory sensitivity to alcohol and/or its absorption, are avoided.

A critique of cannabis legalization proposals in Canada.

An editorial in this issue describes a cannabis policy framework document issued by a major Canadian research centre, calling for legalization of non-medical use under strict controls to prevent increase in use, especially by adolescents and young adults who are most vulnerable to adverse effects of cannabis. It claims that such a system would eliminate the severe personal, social and monetary costs of prohibition, diminish the illicit market, and provide more humane management of cannabis use disorders. It claims that experience with regulation of alcohol and tobacco will enable a system based on public health principles to control access of youth to cannabis without the harm caused by prohibition.