WHAT'S UP WITH WEED?
Recently I read the pot market more than doubled during the pandemic. And yet almost everywhere a weed shop stood in this town in 2018 now sits a vacant storefront, many for some years at this point. So I thought I would go look for some numbers.
THE SPECULATION
The first thing to notice is that in 2016, prior to legalization, Deloitte and other cannabis industry insiders suggested Canada was likely missing out on a market as big as $8.7 billion. Naturally, many claimed at the time this was a severe underestimate. CBC and others reported that, including ancillary businesses, “legalization could ignite a $22.6 billion industry in Canada”. (For scale, in 2016, household purchases of alcohol amounted to $22.3 billion and tobacco $16 billion.) And, of course, everyone celebrated as shares in virgin marijuana companies boomed with the approach of legalization.
In 2017, BDS Analytics told investors sales would hit $4 billion by 2021 and grow to $6.5 billion by 2025. (They even had a fancy graph!) On the cusp of legalization in 2018, Deloitte had reassessed and were saying there would be “$7.17 billion in total sales in 2019” with legal sales “expected to contribute more than half of this total—up to $4.34 billion—in the first year.”
REAL DOLLARS
So what happened post-legalization? According to Statistics Canada, after a large spike in marijuana consumption in 2020 with the start of the pandemic, household expenditure rose to an all-time high (zing!) of $1.7 billion. Is that anywhere close to the $8.7B or even the $4.3B picture folks painted? A year later the Financial Post shared some findings from an Ontario law firm, Miller Thomson, who estimated Canadian investors lost $131 billion by way of 183 publicly traded cannabis companies. Though this is a sum so tremendous it’s equivalent to losses of $3,500 for every Canadian, this total failure of course didn’t hurt CEOs, who made crazy millions in bonuses alone. So, surprise, things were never anything like the start-ups (or the governments collecting taxes and licensing fees) wanted you to believe. But the financials aren’t the only thing off. The marijuana legalization folks also lied, and rather dramatically, about nearly every aspect of their miracle medicine, from popularity to perception and from why people use it to the prevalence of addiction.
WHAT ELSE DO SURVEYS SHOW?
Stats Can surveys of recent years suggest that, despite legalization, only half of us feel regular cannabis consumption is socially acceptable and only around 65% think even occasional use is alright. With that, only about 25% of adults have used cannabis at least once in the last year, with only around 20% of Canadians age 16+ reporting using cannabis in the past month. More than that, half of all regular cannabis users (smokers, vapers, gummy and brownie eaters, drinkers, dabbers, and topical ointment appliers) feel consumption caused them harm. HALF! And then there are the 90% of weed smokers who report feeling cannabis use is habit forming. I found all of this surprising and, as with so very much these days, effectively the opposite of everything I hear from advocates, industry, and government.
Some other favourite stats:
"23% of people who had used cannabis in the past 12mo reported they'd driven within 2hrs of consumption at some point (an increase from 21% in 2021). Of these individuals, 37% reported having done so within the past 30 days"
"People who reported 'going to school' as their main activity in the past week reported higher rates of past 12-month cannabis use (34%) compared to those who selected an activity other than 'going to school' (27%)"
"Those who reported having less than high school or a high school diploma as their highest level of education reported higher rates of past 12-month cannabis use (29%)"
"Past 12-month cannabis use was lowest among those reporting excellent (22%) and very good (26%) physical health"
"The most common reasons for an increase in cannabis use were stress (59%), anxiety (55%), boredom (51%)"
That sounds about right.
Comments