A year after pot legalization in Canada, legal sales are expected to total $1 billion. But the weed is expensive, the selection is limited, the black market persists, and licensed stores are scarce.
In this Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2019 photo, a customer sniffs a display sample of marijuana, in a tamper-proof container secured with a cable, sold at Evergreen Cannabis, a marijuana retail shop, in Vancouver, B.C. One year into Canada’s experiment in legal marijuana, hundreds of legal pot shops have sprung up. But many people still buy their weed on the sly, because taxes and other issues mean that craft marijuana costs nearly twice what it did before legalization.
Yet legal sales in the first year are expected to total just $1 billion, an amount dwarfed by an illegal market still estimated at $5 billion to $7 billion. Canada allowed provinces to shape their own laws within a federal framework, including setting the minimum age and deciding whether to distribute through state-run or private retail outlets. Some have done better than others.
Nowhere are the challenges of legalization more pronounced than British Columbia, which has had a flourishing cannabis culture since U.S. military draft-dodgers settled there during the Vietnam War era. They grew what became known as “B.C. Bud,” high quality marijuana cherished by American consumers.
Regulators hoped to have 250 legal shops operating in British Columbia by now; instead, they have only about 80 private stores and seven government-run shops. Through July, legal sales in B.C. were a meager $25 million. Alberta, with a smaller population, hit $145 million.
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