Alberta needs to better prepare its health care system for marijuana legalization, an academic told a Calgary seminar on the watershed drug reforms said Friday.

While Cam Wild praised Ottawa’s approach to legalizing the recreational use of the drug, he said the province has considerable work to do in the medical field to ensure the move’s success.

A priority should be dedicating tax revenues raised from pot sales to mental health and addictions programs, rather than putting them into general revenues, said Wild, of the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health.

That’s the policy followed by states that have legalized recreational pot, such as California, Washington and Oregon, he said.

“That concept is foreign to us,” he said.

He noted in 2015-16 that Alberta took slightly more than $3 billion in sin taxes  — from tobacco, alcohol and gambling — compared to $2.8 billion from non-renewable resources.

“Look at the amount we’ve put into general coffers from legal addictive behaviours without cannabis legalization,” he told those gathered at the conference hosted by the University of Calgary’s O’Brien Institute for Public Health.

Alberta’s health care spending priorities, which devote four to five per cent of total health care expenditures to mental health and addictions, also need to change ahead of marijuana legalization scheduled to take effect in July 2018, said Wild.

And only 20 per cent of that, he said, is funnelled to addictions treatment.

“Mental health is 25 per cent of the total disease burden so we have a massive imbalance in spending on public health,” he said.

“Our system for prevention and treatment is currently not up to task on the basis of evidence-based treatment approaches.”

Alberta, he said, also needs better information on the scope of marijuana use and abuse in the province, though research shows about 11 per cent of Albertans over the age of 15 have used marijuana in the past year.

The conference also heard Albertans’ views on cannabis tend to underestimate the medical harm the drug poses.

But Wild said Ottawa’s middle ground on legalization, accompanied by with strict rules avoids unregulated climates in both the black and legal markets, and has probably found “a sweet spot.”

Cannabis on display at a shop in Talent, Ore. Oregon shops began selling marijuana to recreational users on Oct. 1, 2015. Bob Pennell / Associated Press

And an American expert on the issue said the federal government has taken a methodical, comprehensive approach to the process, particularly when compared to U.S. states.

“In the U.S., there isn’t much discussion and the initiatives get put on a ballot,” said Dr. Beau Kilmer, senior researcher with the RAND Drug Policy Research Center.

“The federal government here has spent a lot of time talking to people inside and outside the country and the report that resulted was a great launching pad,” said Kilmer, referring to a federal task force report released last November.

But some of the provinces, to whom many facets of regulation have been left, say the process is being rushed.