Locating Medical and Recreational Cannabis Outlets for Research Purposes: Online Methods and Observational Study
Locating Medical and Recreational Cannabis Outlets for Research Purposes: Online Methods and Observational Study
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DOI：
10.2196/16853
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发表时间：
2020-02-26
影响因子：
7.4
通讯作者：
D'Amico, Elizabeth J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Pedersen, Eric R.;Firth, Caislin;D'Amico, Elizabeth J.
背景：越来越多的州制定了在实体店面合法销售娱乐和医用大麻的法律。鉴于大麻销售点的扩散及其对当地经济、社区结构和大麻使用个人模式的潜在影响，有必要制定实用和彻底的方法来捕获此类销售点的位置以用于研究目的。然而，研究人员使用的方法在不同研究之间差异很大，并且通常不包括有关零售商许可证状态和店面标牌的重要信息。 目的：本研究的目的是找到在休闲大麻零售商获得许可证并允许开业后定位和观察洛杉矶县大麻商店的方法。方法：程序包括搜索在线大麻商店数据库，然后是验证每个商店的名称、地址、许可证信息和营业状态的方法。这些程序仅在网上进行，形成了包含 531 个网点的数据库。为了进一步核实每个网点的信息并收集标识数据，我们对已识别的 531 个网点进行了直接观察。结果：我们发现这些网点中有 80.9% (430/531) 正在营业，其中 37.6% (162/430) 拥有销售大麻的许可。无证商店不太可能有标牌表明该商店出售大麻，例如绿色十字，这是观察到的标牌最常见的形式。大麻和烟草/尼古丁的共同使用已被发现是一个重大健康问题，我们观察到 40.6% (175/430) 的大麻销售点在大麻销售点的视线范围内设有烟草/尼古丁销售点。大多数（350/430，81.4%）大麻销售点位于洛杉矶市内，这些销售点比城外的销售点更有可能获得许可。 结论：本研究的结果表明，在线搜索和观察方法对于最好地捕获有关大麻销售点的准确和详细信息都是必要的。这里描述的方法可以应用于其他大都市地区，以更准确地捕获某个地区大麻的供应情况。
Background: An increasing number of states have laws for the legal sale of recreational and medical cannabis out of brick-and-mortar storefront locations. Given the proliferation of cannabis outlets and their potential for impact on local economies, neighborhood structures, and individual patterns of cannabis use, it is essential to create practical and thorough methods to capture the location of such outlets for research purposes. However, methods used by researchers vary greatly between studies and often do not include important information about the retailer's license status and storefront signage.Objective: The aim of this study was to find methods for locating and observing cannabis outlets in Los Angeles County after the period when recreational cannabis retailers were granted licenses and allowed to be open for business.Methods: The procedures included searches of online cannabis outlet databases, followed by methods to verify each outlet's name, address, license information, and open status. These procedures, conducted solely online, resulted in a database of 531 outlets. To further verify each outlet's information and collect signage data, we conducted direct observations of the 531 identified outlets.Results: We found that 80.9% (430/531) of these outlets were open for business, of which 37.6% (162/430) were licensed to sell cannabis. Unlicensed outlets were less likely to have signage indicating the store sold cannabis, such as a green cross, which was the most prevalent form of observed signage. Co-use of cannabis and tobacco/nicotine has been found to be a substantial health concern, and we observed that 40.6% (175/430) of cannabis outlets had a tobacco/nicotine outlet within sight of the cannabis outlet. Most (350/430, 81.4%) cannabis outlets were located within the City of Los Angeles, and these outlets were more likely to be licensed than outlets outside the city.Conclusions: The findings of this study suggest that online searches and observational methods are both necessary to best capture accurate and detailed information about cannabis outlets. The methods described here can be applied to other metropolitan areas to more accurately capture the availability of cannabis in an area.