Faculty
Social Science
Supervisor Name
Dr. Christopher Alcantara
Keywords
Policy Diffusion, Federalism, Policy Development, Canada, Cannabis Policy
Description
Although there have been many prominent examples of policy learning and transfer across governments in Canada, policy diffusion in the Canadian context remains an understudied topic. This project seeks to contribute to the literature by empirically analyzing the development of cannabis legislation in Canadian provinces and territories in the months leading up to the federal legalization of cannabis in October 2018. We utilize textual similarity software to analyze similarities between cannabis, alcohol, and tobacco legislation in provinces and territories and find that rather than learning from each other in developing their cannabis laws, provinces and territories replicated their existing alcohol and tobacco regimes in forming policies regulating cannabis.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Document Type
Poster
Included in
Political Science Commons, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons
My Words, or Yours? Analyzing the Development of Cannabis Legislation in Canada
Although there have been many prominent examples of policy learning and transfer across governments in Canada, policy diffusion in the Canadian context remains an understudied topic. This project seeks to contribute to the literature by empirically analyzing the development of cannabis legislation in Canadian provinces and territories in the months leading up to the federal legalization of cannabis in October 2018. We utilize textual similarity software to analyze similarities between cannabis, alcohol, and tobacco legislation in provinces and territories and find that rather than learning from each other in developing their cannabis laws, provinces and territories replicated their existing alcohol and tobacco regimes in forming policies regulating cannabis.