Primary vs Secondary Sources: Cannabis Law
How to tell a statute, regulation or regulator notice from a news summary or a blog, with a short checklist.
Short answer: a primary source is the law or official notice itself, such as a statute, a regulation or a regulator's own notice. A secondary source, such as a news story or blog, describes it. For cannabis law, read the primary source, and use summaries only to find it.
What counts as a primary source
- A statute: the text of the law passed by a legislature.
- A regulation: detailed rules made under a statute, often by a department.
- A regulator's notice or guidance: published on the regulator's own website.
- A court decision, where one changes how a law applies.
What counts as a secondary source
- News stories and press summaries.
- Blogs, forums and social media posts.
- Lawyers' or advocacy groups' commentary.
- Maps and status tables compiled by others.
Secondary sources can be useful. They are often quicker to read, and they can point you to the right law. They can also be out of date, incomplete or wrong, and they rarely say when they were last checked.
A checklist for telling them apart
- Is the page on an official government or regulator website?
- Does it quote or reproduce the legal text, or describe it?
- Does it give a date of publication and a citation, such as a section number?
- Does it link to the official text so you can read it yourself?
- Does it say who wrote it and who is responsible for it?
If the answer to the first question is no, treat the page as a secondary source, however confident it sounds.
How to move from a summary to the source
- Note the law or notice the summary names.
- Search for it by name on the regulator's website. Our guide to finding your cannabis regulator explains how.
- Read the section that matters, and check whether it is in force.
- Compare it with the summary. Note any difference.
Common mistakes
- Treating a status map as the law.
- Using a post with no date.
- Assuming a headline reflects the final text.
See also how to read a cannabis law page and why cannabis headlines mislead on legal status.
Sources
- Your regulator's official website, and the official text of the law for your jurisdiction.
Not legal advice. This is a general explanation of how to read sources.
Last updated .
How we write this: figures come only from named public sources, and where we have no source we write without a number. Published by Insaan LLC as an organisation, with no individual author named; see about this site.
