“The Box Has Become an Indispensable Part of My Life”: A Case Study of Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club and its Consumption Space
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Community-based models of cannabis cultivation, distribution, and consumption—such as cannabis clubs—have been documented across Europe, North America, South America, and New Zealand since the 1990s. For the most part, these models have a history of operating outside existing legislation and regulations. Jurisdictions that have legalized cannabis have approached community-based models in opposite ways (eliminate vs. regulate). Canada legalizing cannabis has resulted in more stringent enforcement and concerted efforts to close these models despite documented health and social benefits. This paper presents a case study of the Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club (VCBC) and its consumption space—The Box. We conducted a survey of VCBC members to explore four domains: demographics, cannabis consumption, access to and use of The Box, and the impact of its temporary closure due to COVID-19. From the survey data ( n = 104), descriptive statistics were generated and three conceptual avenues were identified. The majority of respondents were 40 years old and older and identified as White (European descent) cisgendered men and women. The majority reported an income of $40,000 or less and a housing status that prevented them from smoking. Close to 75% of our sample consumed cannabis multidaily for therapeutic purposes primarily, but also for a mix of recreation, social, spiritual, and traditional healing purposes. Smoking was the preferred mode of consumption. Respondents accessed The Box daily or weekly. Reasons and benefits for using The Box fell into three categories: public health, harm reduction, and wellness perspectives. Conceptually, we found that The Box acted as a therapeutic space and offered a much-needed consumption space for smokers. We also identified a need to unpack the concept of safety. Overall, the survey reinforces the need for an equity-informed approach to community-based models and cannabis consumption spaces in Canada.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it