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Cannabis policy diffusion in Ontario and New Brunswick: Coercion, learning, and replication
Author(s) -
Train Andrew,
Snow Dave
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
canadian public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.361
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1754-7121
pISSN - 0008-4840
DOI - 10.1111/capa.12346
Subject(s) - legalization , coercion (linguistics) , cannabis , recreation , government (linguistics) , public policy , replication (statistics) , public administration , political science , power (physics) , criminology , addiction , law , psychology , psychiatry , medicine , philosophy , linguistics , physics , virology , quantum mechanics
This article integrates Hall’s (1993) social learning framework, as well as more recent contributions, into the literature on policy diffusion to better identify the goals, instruments, and precise settings for recreational cannabis policy in New Brunswick and Ontario. We analyze committee hearings, Hansard debates, and government reports and find that policy diffused via three mechanisms: coercion due to the federal criminal law power, learning from Washington and Colorado, and replication of analogous provincial policies concerning tobacco and alcohol. We also find the non‐binding federal Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation had a considerable effect on the diffusion of goals, instruments, and settings.