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While cannabis dependence has been increasingly recognized, there is little research on the measurement issues involved in operationalizing the dependence syndrome for this drug. This paper aimed to investigate the diagnostic utility and appropriate diagnostic cut‐offs of three short dependence measures among long‐term cannabis users. Two hundred long‐term, regular cannabis users were recruited and interviewed in Sydney, Australia. Receiver Operating Characteristic analyses compared the diagnostic performance of the short University of Michigan CIDI, a measure of ICD‐10 dependence and the Severity of Dependence Scale against the "gold standard" of moderate or more severe DSM‐III‐R cannabis dependence, as diagnosed by the Substance Abuse Module of the CIDI. The measures were of equal utility in diagnosing at least moderate DSM‐III …