Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de santé publique
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Can J Public Health · Dec 2018
A missed opportunity? Cannabis legalization and reparations in Canada.
As Canada moves towards the legalization of cannabis, the Cannabis Act itself remains void of any complementary social justice measures. Decades of criminalization for the possession, production, and sale of cannabis will remain unscathed under this ostensibly new approach, leaving intact laws that have disproportionately and prejudicially impacted Indigenous people and people of colour. ⋯ Despite the continuing impacts, the Government of Canada has made no commitment to tandem initiatives that address the issues of reparation for those who have been most heavily targeted under cannabis prohibition. Public health implications are discussed.
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Can J Public Health · Dec 2018
Is 'health equity' bad for our health? A qualitative empirical ethics study of public health policy-makers' perspectives.
'Social justice' and 'health equity' are core values in public health. Yet, despite their normative character, the numerous normative accounts of social justice and equity are rarely acknowledged, meaning that these values are often unaccompanied by an explanation of what they require in practice. The objective of this study was to bridge this normative scholarship with information about how these 'core values' are integrated and interpreted by Canadian public health policy-makers. ⋯ These findings indicate that health equity dominates the discursive space wherein justice-based considerations are brought to bear on public health activities. As a result, 'uncomfortable' justice-based considerations of power imbalances and systematic disadvantage can be eschewed in practice in favour of attending to 'proximal' inequities. These findings reveal the problematic ways in which considerations of justice and equity are, and are not, being taken up in public health policy, which in turn may have negative implications for the public's health.