Intervening to Prevent Youth Access to Marijuana

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant The legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington in is the most dramatic change in substance abuse policy in the United States since the end of Prohibition These states are implementing regulatory and enforcement systems for the retail sales of recreational marijuana to adults years or older akin to state controls on the sale of alcohol In the U S Department of Justice DOJ issued directives that it would monitor whether these states implemented strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems that among other DOJ priorities prevented distribution of marijuana to youth A retail sales intervention that has been effective at reducing illegal alcohol sales to minors and intoxicated patrons is alcoholic beverage server training or Responsible Beverage Service training RBS which is currently required or incentivized by states Colorado recently enacted a law for incentivized marijuana vendor training RMV for retail licensees and employees and Washington is considering RMV In this Phase I SBIR we will evaluate the feasibility of creating and evaluating an online RMV by achieving the following aims to explore the concept content of RMV with a owners managers and clerks in retail outlets and b state and local regulators and enforcement officials to examine potential under age sales with owners managers clerks and minors who use marijuana to develop a prototype RMV in flowcharts and storyboards and by programming one module to evaluate the prototype RMV with owners managers clerks and local regulators officials to identify licensed marijuana retail outlets eligible for inclusion in a randomized trial in Phase II and to estimate current refusal rates of sales of marijuana to minors using pseudo patron assessment An Expert Advisory Board comprised of local and state regulators retail cannabis licensed sellers and experts in responsible beverage service training will advise on research procedures and evaluate study outcomes for feasibility of moving to full production and evaluation of the RMV in Phase II research The long term objectives of the SBIR research are urgently needed and extremely significant as increased drug availability is linked to marijuana initiation and many minors drink alcohol despite similar state controls Also the proposed research will have a very large impact for it will create a model of effective RMV by a third party not the cannabis industry that can be used by states that have legalized retail marijuana sales or will do so in th future The online RMV program will be a first of its kind intervention for a highly unique circumstance the first legal U S retail markets for marijuana The commercial potential for RMV by a third party outside the cannabis industry is currently untapped and the retail cannabis market is poised to grow tremendously in the next few years Staff at the National Institute on Drug Abuse NIDA has confirmed that research on RMV with its goal of preventing distribution to minors fits NIDAandapos s priority to support research on social behavioral and public health impacts of policy changes on marijuana including recreational marijuana legalization PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE The legalization of marijuana use and sales in Colorado and Washington is a dramatic change in U S substance abuse policy that places a priority on developing regulatory and enforcement systems that prevent distribution of marijuana to minors Responsible marijuana vendor training modeled after effective responsible alcoholic beverage training has the potential to help the states prevent distribution to minors This research will evaluate the feasibility of producing a responsible marijuana vendor training provided by a third party not the cannabis industry and testing its effectiveness with retail licensees and employees in Colorado and Washington