The Cannabis Act came into force on 17 October 2018. Eight years on, Statistics Canada puts recreational cannabis sales at $5.5 billion for the fiscal year ending 31 March 2025, up 6.1 percent, and peer-reviewed work puts the share of cannabis spending captured by legal sources at 78 percent. Those two figures describe an industry that has stopped growing quickly and started consolidating. Below is what the published numbers say, and what they do not.
The timeline, precisely
Two dates matter, and they are often run together.
- 17 October 2018. The Cannabis Act came into force. Dried cannabis, fresh cannabis, oils, plants and seeds became legal to produce, distribute and sell under federal and provincial licence.
- 17 October 2019. The amended regulations covering edible cannabis, extracts and topicals came into force. Health Canada said at the time that "a limited selection of products will appear gradually in physical or online stores, and no earlier than mid-December 2019."
So the edible and extract categories are a year younger than the flower category, and in practice about fourteen months younger on shelf. That gap explains a great deal about the growth rates below.
What the market is worth
Statistics Canada published its most recent full-year figures on 5 March 2026, covering 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.
| Measure | Figure | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Recreational cannabis sales, Canada | $5.5 billion | Up 6.1 percent, or $0.3 billion |
| Government revenue from recreational cannabis | $2.5 billion | Up 11.5 percent |
| Sales per person of legal age, national | $167 | |
| Highest per person, Yukon | $384 | |
| Lowest per person, Quebec | $105 | |
| Cannabis prices, March 2024 to March 2025 | Down 1.1 percent |
Two things stand out. Government revenue grew nearly twice as fast as sales. And the per-person spread between Yukon and Quebec is more than three to one, which is a product of provincial rules rather than appetite: Quebec does not permit cannabis vaping products and restricts which edible formats may be sold.
Where the growth is
The category mix moved in the same year.
- Inhaled extracts were the fastest-growing category at 12.8 percent, reaching a 31.1 percent share.
- Dried flower grew 3 percent and held 59.7 percent.
- Solid edibles fell 2.2 percent, the only category to decline.
The flower number is the one worth pausing on. Eight years in, dried cannabis is still close to 60 percent of the market by value, which is not what most forecasts in 2018 predicted. We looked at the broader category picture in our 2026 trends piece.
Where people buy
The most recent peer-reviewed estimate comes from the International Cannabis Policy Study team. Writing in the International Journal of Drug Policy, volume 142 (2025), Hammond and colleagues combined Canadian Community Health Survey prevalence data with survey expenditure data and government retail sales records, and estimated legal market capture of 78 percent for the twelve months ending September 2022. The authors note their self-reported legal expenditure figures matched government retail sales data to within two percentage points.
For context, Statistics Canada previously reported that 47 percent of cannabis users obtained at least some of their cannabis from a legal source in 2019, rising to 68 percent in 2020.
What happened to price
A separate paper from the same research programme, Rundle and colleagues in Drug and Alcohol Review (2025), measured self-reported prices paid for dried flower by source. Reported neutrally, the finding is that the measured difference between the two narrowed considerably over five years: from $3.59 per gram in 2019, to $1.74 per gram in 2020, to $1.49 per gram in the 2022 and 2023 survey waves.
That is a research measurement of a national market, not a statement about any particular shop or product. It is reported here because it is among the most-cited economic findings of the legalization period.
The supply side is shrinking
The number of licensed producers is now going down, not up. StratCann's analysis of Health Canada licensing data, published 31 August 2026, found:
- 900 federal cannabis licences in force at the end of August 2026.
- 45 new production licences issued in the first eight months of 2026, of which 32 were micro licences.
- 56 revocations in the same period, 46 on request and 10 by the Minister.
- A net loss of 11 licences so far in 2026.
British Columbia took 18 of the 45 new licences, 15 of them micros. Ontario took 12, split evenly between six micro and six standard.
Ontario specifically
The Ontario Cannabis Store's annual data report for the 2025 calendar year records $2,281,841,116 in legal cannabis sales in the province on 441,069,676 grams, across 1,780 authorized stores, an increase of 60 stores or 3 percent year over year.
Ontario is therefore roughly 40 percent of the national market by value, served by a store network that is now growing at low single digits after several years of rapid expansion. If you want to check that a given store is one of the authorized 1,780, we set out how in how to tell a legal Toronto cannabis store from an unlicensed one.
What the numbers do not say
Three honest caveats.
The legal capture estimate is dated. The 78 percent figure covers the twelve months to September 2022. It is the most recent peer-reviewed estimate we could verify, but four years have passed since the period it measures.
Sales value is not consumption. Falling prices mean that flat or slowly rising sales figures can sit on top of rising volumes. Statistics Canada reported prices down 1.1 percent over the year while sales rose 6.1 percent, so at least part of that 6.1 percent is more grams rather than more dollars per gram.
National figures hide the provinces. With a three-to-one spread in per-person sales between jurisdictions, a Canadian average describes no actual market. The rules that shape what is on a shelf are provincial, which is why our packaging and edibles explainers are written for Ontario.
If you want to see what eight years of rule-making looks like on an actual shelf, the labels are the fastest way in. Come by 811 Dundas St W and read a few, or browse what we carry.
Sources
- Statistics Canada, Control and sale of alcoholic beverages and cannabis, April 1 2024 to March 31 2025, released 5 March 2026: statcan.gc.ca
- Health Canada, Taking stock of progress: cannabis legalization and regulation in Canada: canada.ca
- Health Canada news release on edibles, extracts and topicals regulations, June 2019: canada.ca
- Hammond D et al., Transitions to legal cannabis markets, International Journal of Drug Policy vol 142 (2025): sciencedirect.com
- Rundle S et al., Self-reported cannabis prices and expenditures from legal and illegal sources five years after legalisation, Drug and Alcohol Review (2025): onlinelibrary.wiley.com
- StratCann, licensing analysis, 31 August 2026: stratcann.com
- Ontario Cannabis Marketplace: By The Numbers, 1 January to 31 December 2025: doingbusinesswithocs.ca