China News Service, Toronto, March 18 (Xinhua) Survey data released by Statistics Canada on March 18 showed that five years after the country's recreational marijuana legalization law came into effect, more than one-third of the people surveyed aged 18 to 44 years old Have used cannabis in the past 12 months.
In the survey, conducted from mid-July to mid-October 2023, 38.4% of respondents aged 18 to 24 and 34.5% of respondents aged 25 to 44 reported that they had Has used marijuana.
Among respondents over 45 years old, this proportion was 15.5%.
About one in 10 respondents aged 18 to 44 had used cannabis every day or almost every day in the past 12 months.
The proportion among respondents over 45 years old was 4.8%.
Statistics Canada pointed out that another recent study found that about 72.4% of daily cannabis consumers have impaired control over their use.
There are currently more than 3,000 legal cannabis stores in Canada, and more than two-thirds of cannabis consumers purchase cannabis from the legal market.
Among respondents who had used cannabis in the 12 months prior to the survey, 71.7% reported purchasing their cannabis exclusively from the legal market.
The survey targeted more than 2,200 people aged 18 to 24 and nearly 5,200 people aged 25 and over from across Canada.
Canada made marijuana illegal in 1923.
However, since the end of July 2001, Canada has become the first country in the world to use the legal system to regulate the medical use of cannabis, and patients can use medical cannabis with a prescription.
On October 17, 2018, Canada’s recreational cannabis legalization law, the Cannabis Act, officially came into effect.
Canada has thus become the first among the seven major industrialized countries in the West to legalize recreational marijuana nationwide.
The Canadian government believes that through this law, the government has legalized, strictly regulated, and restricted access to cannabis.