82% of residents unlikely to use legal pot: survey

New public opinion research in Saskatchewan suggests the overwhelming majority of people in the province — 82 per cent — are unlikely to consume marijuana once it becomes legal this fall.

The data was collected by the University of Saskatchewan’s Social Sciences Research Laboratories (SSRL) as part of the Taking the Pulse initiative, which involves SSRL researchers calling a representative sample of Saskatchewan residents four times a year and asking for their views on hot-button topics in the province. The results are published by Postmedia News.

Researchers called 400 people earlier this month and asked how likely they are to consume cannabis once it becomes legal. The majority — 82.4 per cent — said they were unlikely or very unlikely to consume cannabis, while 15.4 per cent said they were likely or very likely to consume the drug. The remaining 2.2 per cent of respondents refused to answer or said they didn’t know.

According to the 2015 Canadian Tobacco Alcohol and Drugs Survey (CTADS) — the most recent such survey available — 45 per cent of surveyed Canadians said they had consumed cannabis at least once in their life and 12 per cent said they had consumed it within the last year. Saskatchewan’s numbers were slightly lower than the Canadian average, with 40 per cent of surveyed Saskatchewanians saying they had consumed marijuana in their lifetime and 10 per cent saying they had consumed it in the last year.

Michael Szafron, a public health professor at the University of Saskatchewan, noted that data on cannabis use should be taken with a grain of salt because some people may be reluctant to admit consuming an illegal drug. As such, it’s hard to know how many people are currently consuming marijuana.

He expects that, whatever the number is, it will increase once the drug is legalized, he said.

“How big (an increase)? I don’t know.”

It depends on how many people haven’t consumed cannabis in the past solely because it’s illegal or because they haven’t had access to it. It may not be a large number, he said.

“I don’t get a sense that too many people are saying, ‘ Well, the reason I’m not using marijuana is because it’s illegal’ ... There could be lots of reasons why somebody wasn’t using it.”

Saskatoon entrepreneur Clay Sparks, who has won a permit to open a cannabis shop in La Loche, laughed when he saw the Taking the Pulse survey results. He said the suggestion that only 15 per cent of Saskatchewan residents will consume cannabis once it becomes legal on Oct. 17 seems “extremely low.”

Sparks said he doesn’t have an estimate of how many people will consume marijuana come the fall, but he’s confident it will be more than 15 per cent. He said he expects the number to grow as consuming cannabis becomes normalized and more cannabis products hit the market.

The results of the survey may be reflective of a public that doesn’t understand how large and diverse the cannabis market could become, he said. “When people think of consuming cannabis, all they think of is smoking weed.”

Sparks said his cannabis store will eventually carry a vast array of products including tinctures, creams and snacks.

“It can be a lollipop or a sucker or a beverage or something much more socially accepted as something that you would either consume for health, pleasure or pain relief, not just getting high,” he said. “It’s going to take a little while for that shift to occur in people’s minds.”

Taking the Pulse found people aged 18 to 34 are significantly more likely to consume marijuana than people aged 35 and over.

Similarly, the 2015 CTADS data found that younger Canadians (aged 20 to 24) were more likely to have consumed marijuana in their lifetime and within the past year than Canadians aged 25 and older.

The U of S researchers found women were more likely than men to say they would consume cannabis once it’s legal. Szafron said he was surprised by that result, given that national surveys have indicated men are more likely than women to consume cannabis.

Szafron said it’s difficult to say why this is. Maybe the perceived national trend is incorrect; there might be women using cannabis who aren’t admitting to consuming illegal drugs.

Another explanation may be that the group of new cannabis consumers who haven’t previously consumed cannabis simply because it’s illegal may be largely female, he said.

Knowing the ages and genders of cannabis users is important because it allows for appropriate public health messaging, Szafron said. If agencies have previously planned to target young men about risks associated with marijuana use, it’s important for them to know they should also be communicating to young women, he says.