Canada Received $1.9 Billion From Legal Cannabis Sales In 2022/2023
Canada became the first G-7 nation on the planet to pass a national adult-use legalization measure in 2018, and only the second country to ever do so. The only country to have passed a national adult-use legalization measure before Canada was Uruguay, which legalized cannabis for adult use in 2013.
However, unlike Uruguay, which limits legal adult-use sales to residents, anyone of legal age (18 years old) can make recreational cannabis purchases from retailers in Canada. Canada remains the largest adult-use policy and industry experiment on Earth.
Statistics Canada recently released new cannabis industry and consumer data, including how much money the legal industry generated for Canadian governments during the 2022/2023 fiscal period. Per excerpts from Statistics Canada:
Sales of recreational cannabis by provincial cannabis authorities and other retail outlets increased 15.8% to $4.7 billion in the 2022/2023 fiscal year. Most of the increase was due to higher sales of inhaled extracts (+59.0%), which accounted for one-quarter of total cannabis sales.
Federal and provincial governments received $1.9 billion from the control and sale of recreational cannabis in 2022/2023, up by almost one-quarter (+24.2%) from a year earlier.
With more than 3,000 legal cannabis stores in Canada, over two in three cannabis consumers bought from the legal market. Among those who used cannabis in the 12 months before the survey, just over 7 out of 10 (71.7%) bought exclusively from legal sources.
Cannabis legalization is succeeding in Canada by every reasonable measure, as demonstrated by the new consumer and industry data from Statistics Canada. In addition to the revenue generated by Canada’s legal industry for public coffers, governments have also saved a considerable amount of public resources by no longer arresting consumers for cannabis activity.
Canada is a glowing example of what is possible when lawmakers take a sensible approach toward cannabis. The nation’s cannabis law is not perfect, however, it is undeniably better than cannabis prohibition and countries would be wise to follow in Canada’s footsteps.