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In line with the global trend, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been growing vulnerable to the direct and indirect health effects of climate change including death tolls due to climatological disasters and diseases sensitive to climate change since the industrial revolution. Regarding the limited capacity of MENA countries to adapt and respond to these effects, and also after relative failures of the previous negotiation in Glasgow, in the upcoming COP27 in Egypt, the heads of the region's parties are determined to take advantage of the opportunity to host MENA to mitigate and prevent the worst effects of climate change. This would be achieved through mobilizing international partners to support climate resilience, a major economic transformation, and put health policy and management in a strategic position to contribute to thinking and action on these pressing matters, at least to avoid or minimize the future adverse consequences., (© 2022 The Author(s); Published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.)

Despite progressive universal drug coverage and pharmaceutical policies found in other countries, Canada remains the only developed nation with a publicly funded healthcare system that does not include universal coverage for prescription drugs. In the absence of a national pharmacare plan, a province may choose to cover a specific sub-population for certain drugs. Although different provinces have individually attempted to extend coverage to certain subpopulations within their jurisdictions, out-of-pocket expenses on drugs and pharmaceutical products (OPEDP) accounts for a large proportion of out-of-pocket health expenses (OPHE) that are catastrophic in nature. Pharmaceutical drug coverage is a major source of public scrutiny among politicians and policy-makers in Canada. In this editorial, we focus on social inequalities in the burden of OPEDP in Canada. Prescription drugs are inconsistently covered under patchworks of public insurance coverage, and this inconsistency represents a major source of inequity of healthcare financing. Residents of certain provinces, rural households and Canadians from poorer households are more likely to be affected by this inequity and suffer disproportionately higher proportions of catastrophic out-of-pocket expenses on drugs and pharmaceutical products (COPEDP). Universal pharmacare would reduce COPEDP and promote a more equitable healthcare system in Canada.

Notwithstanding a century of prohibition, marijuana is the most widely used illicit substance in Canada. Due to the growing public acceptance of recreational marijuana use and ineffectiveness of the existing control system in Canada, the issue surrounding legalizing this illicit drug has received considerable public and political attentions in recent years. Consequently, the newly elected Liberal Government has formally announced that Canada will introduce legislation in the spring of 2017 to start legalizing and regulating marijuana. This editorial aims to provide a brief overview on potential economic, social, and public health impacts of legal marijuana in Canada. The legalization could increase tax revenue through the taxation levied on marijuana products and could also allow the Government to save citizens' tax dollars currently being spent on prohibition enforcement. Moreover, legalization could also remove the criminal element from marijuana market and reduce the size of Canada's black market and its consequences for the society. Nevertheless, it may also lead to some public health problems, including increasing in the uptake of the drug, accidents and injuries. The legalization should be accompanied with comprehensive strategies to keep the drug out of the hands of minors while increasing awareness and knowledge on harmful effects of the drug. In order to get better insights on how to develop an appropriate framework to legalize marijuana, Canada should closely watch the development in the neighboring country, the United States, where some of its states viz, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska have already legalized recreational use of marijuana., (© 2016 by Kerman University of Medical Sciences.)