C<\/span>anada\u2019s appetite for cannabis has more than tripled since the early 1990s, a dramatic shift in consumption habits that precedes the country\u2019s experiment with marijuana legalization.<\/p>\n Long more lenient with cannabis than their more conservative neighbors to the south, Canadians have been able to access legal medical marijuana in some form since 2000.<\/p>\n Beginning in 2013, commercially produced cannabis has been available from companies with licenses from Health Canada, the country\u2019s public health department \u2014 and sometime next summer, recreational cannabis will be available<\/a> for all adults in licensed storefronts.<\/p>\n According to an official report from Statistics Canada <\/a>released on Dec. 18, in 2015, 4.9 million Canadians consumed as much as 698 metric tons of marijuana, or $6.2 billion worth of product, in Canadian dollars.<\/p>\n That estimate was arrived at based on user data gleaned from government health surveys, the same method American scientists and health experts rely on to gauge use in America. The report\u2019s authors caution that theirs is but a rough estimate, and the real number could \u201creasonably\u201d be \u201cas low as half or as much as double,\u201d\u00a0as Bloomberg noted.<\/a><\/p>\n Nonetheless, assuming a price range of between $7 and $9 a gram, the Canadian marijuana market would be an estimated size of $4.8 billion dollars or thereabouts ($6.2 billion in Canadian dollars).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This estimation would make the Canadian marijuana market big enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the country\u2019s penchant for beer ($9.2 billion Canadian dollars) and wine ($7 billion Canadian dollars).<\/p>\n Investors are noticing the size of Canada\u2019s marijuana industry.\u00a0In November, mega-brewer Constellation Brands, holder of trademarks including Corona,\u00a0invested $191 million dollars in Canopy Growth<\/a>, one of the cannabis companies with licenses from Health Canada. Canopy Growth is valued at around $2 billion dollars, in large part because of the stupendous value that potential investors see in the country\u2019s impending legalization. (Disclaimer: This reporter owns a very small amount of stock in Canopy Growth.)<\/p>\n And as per the report from Statistics Canada, there\u2019s already a sizable market well ahead of legalization \u2014 as well as some possible room for more growth.<\/p>\n For context\u2019s sake, at roughly 37 million people, Canada\u2019s population is slightly smaller than California\u2019s. According to an estimate prepared for the Golden State in August, Californians consume 3.5 million pounds of cannabis a year, or more than twice Canada\u2019s habit.<\/p>\n Another takeaway from the report: Youth use appears to be on the decline in Canada. People aged 15 to 17 constitute about 6 percent of cannabis consumers in the country, after years of steady decline even as other users of other ages ramped up their habits.<\/p>\n Almost half of Canadian cannabis is consumed by users aged between 25 and 44 \u2014 though there\u2019s some mixing of generations. Young adults aged 18 to 24 use roughly as much cannabis as their parents\u2019 generation between 45 and 64.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you think the size of Canada\u2019s marijuana market will grow?<\/p>\n The post Canada\u2019s Booming Pre-Legalization Marijuana Market<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The billions and the billions, they keep coming. Canada\u2019s appetite for cannabis has more than tripled since the early 1990s, a dramatic shift in consumption habits that precedes the country\u2019s experiment with marijuana legalization. Long more lenient with cannabis than their more conservative neighbors to the south, Canadians have beenContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,50,505,80,170,2940],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22456"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22457,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22456\/revisions\/22457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\nRead More: Canada\u2019s Booming Pre-Legalization Marijuana Market<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"