Canadians grow, and export, lots of illegal pot

OTTAWA • Not only do Canadians have a knack for growing pot, they’re also adept at sneaking it across the border, suggests a new report by Statistics Canada.

Last year, about $1.2 billion worth of cannabis — or 20 per cent of Canada’s total weed production — was illegally sold outside the country, according to a provisional estimate released Thursday by the federal agency.

The figure was tucked into an economic report that is part of the agency’s broader effort to track Canada’s transition to a legalized recreational marijuana market.

Statistics Canada is also building up its capacity to collect and crunch data to monitor the eventual cannabis industry. The documents, some of which will be published quarterly, are designed to help inform governments on their social and economic policy decisions related to legalized weed.

But on the black market, the agency estimated the illegal Canadian sales beyond the country’s borders last year amounted to 20 per cent of Canada’s total production. Illegal pot exports were estimated at just two per cent of Canada’s production in 1961, the report said.

The agency stressed all its estimates are provisional and subject to potentially large revisions because they rely heavily on assumptions.

The report lays out estimates for spending, consumption and production.

The vast majority of cannabis consumed in Canada is grown in the country — the report found it was comparable to the domestic production of tobacco, beer and wine combined.

It estimated the pot-producing industry was worth about $3.4 billion in 2014, while domestic tobacco production that year was $1 billion and alcohol production was $2.9 billion.

The agency estimated 4.9 million Canadians between ages 15 and 64 spent $5.7 billion on cannabis last year. The number was smaller than what households spent in 2016 on tobacco ($16 billion) and on beer, wine and spirits ($22.3 billion).

Of those pot purchases, which amounted to about 770 metric tonnes, 94 per cent of the weed was consumed for non-medical — or illegal — purposes.

Over the decades, Canadians have gradually spent more on pot even though the price-per-gram declined from $12 in 1989 to just $7.50 last year, the report suggests. Today, the average cannabis consumer spends about $100 per month on it, the agency said.

On Thursday, the agency launched an experimental, voluntary crowdsourcing platform designed to gather anonymous consumption data from the public. It also unveiled an online portal, the Cannabis Stats Hub, which enables the public to explore some of the data.