Intervening to Prevent Youth Access to Marijuana Phase II

Klein Buendel

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cannabis

Treatments: Behavioral: Responsible Marijuana Vendor Training

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Industry

Identifiers

NCT03073291

2R44DA038933-02

0309

Details and patient eligibility

About

The legalization of recreational marijuana use and sales in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington State is a dramatic change in U.S. substance abuse policy that places a priority on developing regulatory and enforcement systems that prevent distribution of retail recreational 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 produce a responsible marijuana vendor training provided by a third party, not the cannabis industry, and test its effectiveness with retail recreational marijuana licensees and employees in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington State.

Full description

The legalization of recreational marijuana in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington State is the most dramatic change in U.S. substance abuse policy since the end of Prohibition. These states are implementing regulatory and enforcement systems for the retail sales of recreational marijuana to adults 21 years or older, akin to state controls on the sale of alcohol. In 2013, 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). Recently, Colorado enacted a law for incentivized responsible marijuana vendor training, Oregon will require responsible marijuana vendor training, and Washington State may incentivize it. In this study, we propose to 1) produce the TrainToTend online responsible marijuana vendor training presenting retail marijuana sales laws, methods for checking IDs and preventing third party sales, the health effects of marijuana (e.g., fetal exposure; safe storage), customer service (e.g., driving under the influence; refusing sales to minors), and rules of the trade (e.g., inventory tracking and safety procedures) and 2) conduct a randomized trial on the TrainToTend training with a sample of retail recreational marijuana stores in Colorado, Oregon and Washington State (n=150) that are randomly assigned to have their employees complete the TrainToTend training (experimental group) or receive usual and customary sales training by store managers (no intervention control group). The effect of the TrainToTend training on responsible sales practices will be assessed by changes in recreational marijuana purchase attempts by pseudo-underage patrons (i.e., young-appearing customers without apparently valid IDs) at each store measured at 3-month follow-up and 9-month follow-up relative to baseline.

Enrollment: 448 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 21+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. being 21 or older,
2. owning a retail marijuana outlet or being employed as a manager or budtender at a retail marijuana outlet,
3. have a smart phone, tablet computer or personal computer with Internet access, and
4. consenting to participate

Exclusion criteria

1. a family or household member is already participating,
2. they are not proficient in English, or
3. they participated in the SBIR Phase I research

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

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448 participants in 2 patient groups

Responsible Marijuana Vendor Training

Experimental group

Description:

The TrainToTend online responsible marijuana vendor training teaches responsible sales practices in five modules: Module 1, The Laws; Module 2, ID Checking; Module 3, Health Effects; Module 4, Customer Service, and Module 5, Rules of the Trade. The training content will be conveyed using online educational activities providing application and feedback such as in tabs with appropriate graphics and interactive simulations where users apply the skill and receive informative/corrective feedback.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Responsible Marijuana Vendor Training

Usual and Customary Sales Practices Training

No Intervention group

Description:

Usual and customary training in retail sales practices delivered to employees at retail recreational marijuana stores by store managers. Some retail stores in Colorado may receive responsible marijuana vendor training of some type from another state-approved training provider. Thus, we consider the outlets in the control group to have usual and customer sales training but not to be entirely untrained.