Vapes generate more customer complaints in Ontario than every other cannabis category combined. Edibles generate the fewest. The Ontario Cannabis Store, which is the province's sole wholesaler and therefore sees every complaint logged by every legal store, said in its 2024 to 2025 annual report that "the large majority of complaints continue to originate from the Vape product category." StratCann, reading the same data, put vapes at roughly 70 percent of about 15,000 product complaints, dried flower at roughly 15 percent, and edibles and extracts together at roughly 10 percent.
That is a striking split, and it is not really about the cannabis. It is about what each format has to do mechanically to get from the factory to you.
The numbers side by side
Ontario category shares below are by dollar value of retail sales for the calendar year 2025, from the OCS annual data report. Complaint shares are StratCann's figures drawn from OCS data.
| Category | Share of Ontario retail sales, 2025 | Approximate share of complaints |
|---|---|---|
| Vapes | 19.0 percent ($433.2M) | ~70 percent |
| Dried flower | 36.8 percent ($839.3M) | ~15 percent |
| Edibles | 4.0 percent ($91.8M) | ~10 percent, combined with extracts |
| Extracts | 1.9 percent ($44.1M) | as above |
| Beverages | 1.6 percent ($36.9M) | not separately reported |
Vapes take roughly a fifth of the money and roughly seven tenths of the complaints. Flower takes more than a third of the money and about a seventh of the complaints. Total Ontario sales were $2.28 billion across 1,780 authorised stores.
The OCS measures quality using complaints per million units, which adjusts for volume so a high-selling category is not penalised for selling a lot. It reported 307 complaints per million units in the 2024 to 2025 fiscal year against an internal target of 300. That is a small number in absolute terms. The category split within it is the interesting part.
Why a vape has more ways to go wrong
A vape is the only cannabis format that is a device and a consumable at once. A 510 cartridge is a small pressure vessel holding a viscous liquid, with a ceramic or cotton wick, a heating element, a threaded metal base, a seal, and a mouthpiece. It has to mate with a separate battery made by a different company, hold its contents through shipping and temperature swings, and heat a liquid to vapour without leaking or burning. An all-in-one disposable adds a sealed lithium-ion cell and charging circuitry.
The common failure modes are mechanical and electrical, and none of them require anything to be wrong with the extract itself.
- Leakage. Extract escaping past a seal, usually at the threaded base or around the mouthpiece. Warm temperatures lower the oil's viscosity and raise internal pressure, which is why cartridges leak more in transit in summer.
- Clogging. Thick extract failing to feed to the wick, often after a cartridge has been stored on its side or drawn on while cold.
- Airflow problems. Too tight or too loose, usually a tolerance issue in the mouthpiece or the intake holes.
- Poor contact. A cartridge that does not seat properly on a 510 battery, so the device does not fire or fires intermittently.
- Battery failure. On a disposable, a cell that will not charge or will not hold a charge. The oil is still in there, and there is no way to move it to another device.
- Burnt taste. Typically a battery running at a voltage the cartridge was not designed for, or a wick that has run dry.
Add the interoperability problem. The 510 thread is a de facto standard rather than an enforced one, and cartridges and batteries from different producers vary slightly in thread depth, centre-pin height and intended voltage. Most combinations work. Some do not, and when they do not, the customer experiences it as a defective product. Our walk-through of the hardware is in 510 cartridges and vapes, explained, and the extract inside is covered in Extracts and concentrates, explained.
Why a sealed edible has almost nothing to go wrong
An edible has no power source, no moving parts, no seal that has to hold a liquid under pressure, and no interface with a second device made by somebody else. It is a shelf-stable food product in a child-resistant package with a best-before date.
Its realistic failure modes are short. Packaging that is difficult to open. Texture changing over shelf life, which is why a gummy near the end of its date can be firmer than a fresh one. Transit damage. A label or dosing discrepancy, which is rare because every batch is laboratory tested before release. Most of the rest is storage in a hot car rather than a manufacturing fault.
Dried flower sits in the middle for a related reason. Most of what people report about flower is about moisture, structure and aroma, which are real attributes with an objective basis but which also vary with how the customer stored it. A cartridge that will not fire is unambiguous. Flower that arrived drier than expected is partly about the package and partly about the cupboard it went into. More on that in How to store cannabis.
What the OCS has done about it
This is not an unnoticed problem, and the wholesaler's response is public. In the 2024 to 2025 fiscal year the OCS refined the scoring criteria it applies to vape and extract submissions during its Product Call process, reintroduced targeted quality checks on inbound product at its distribution centre, and launched a Vape Quality Rating tool inside the retailer portal so that stores can see how a given product has performed before ordering it.
That last one matters at our end. It means a store is not choosing vape products blind, and it means a product with a persistent hardware problem is visible to the people placing orders rather than only to the person who bought it.
What to do with this as a shopper
Three practical points, and one caution.
A complaint rate is not a quality ranking. It measures things that visibly fail, which favours formats with fewer mechanical parts. It says nothing about which category anyone should choose. A vape that works is not a worse product than an edible because its category has a higher defect rate.
Keep the packaging and the receipt. A defective device is reported through the store that sold it, which is how it reaches the OCS and the producer. If you throw away the box, that path gets harder.
Check the pairing before you assume the cartridge is faulty. A cartridge that will not fire on one battery often fires fine on another. Voltage range matters too, and most variable batteries have a setting that is too high for a given cartridge.
The caution: all of this is about hardware reliability, not about what any product does. Onset timing differs sharply between inhaled and ingested formats, and the milligram figures on an edible package are the number that matters there. We set that out in Cannabis edibles in Ontario and in Are 100mg edibles actually legal in Canada now?
Our staff can explain what is on a package and how a given cartridge pairs with a given battery. They cannot give medical advice, and we do not make claims about what a product will do for you. You can see what is on our shelf in our full range, and our hours and directions are on the visit page.
Sources
- Ontario Cannabis Marketplace: By the Numbers, 1 January to 31 December 2025, Ontario Cannabis Store.
- Ontario Cannabis Store Annual Report 2024 to 2025, for complaints per million units and the quality initiatives described above.
- Life after flower: rise of the edible, Jon Liedtke, StratCann, 30 March 2026, for the category split of complaints.