shared via YahooNews
Black market cannabis continues to undercut Canada’s legal market by a wide margin, according to the latest crowdsourced price data released by Statistics Canada.
The federal agency found the underweight average price per gram of legally purchased dried cannabis has been $9.99 since legalization, compared to $6.37 per gram from illegal sources.
The purchase price from legal sources was on average 56.8 per cent higher than the purchase price from illegal sources, according to StatCan’s crowdsourced data.
Nick Pateras, vice president of strategy at cannabis data firm Lift & Co. (LIFT.V) said the premium for legal cannabis is “inadequately high.”
“This is why there are a number of consumers who will have to be convinced to return to the legal category. They came in to buy once, but then were discouraged enough by the prices that they’ve not returned,” he told Yahoo Canada Finance.
“All customers, no matter the frequency of their use, were paying more for dried cannabis after legalization,” the agency said in a news release on Wednesday. “Infrequent consumers, or those who use a few times a year, were paying 27.2 per cent more per gram of dried cannabis, while more frequent users, or those who consume daily, were paying 14.8 per cent more since legalization.”
The figures released Wednesday compare to an average price of $9.70 from legal suppliers reported between recreational legalization on Oct. 17 and Dec. 31. That was 49 per cent more than the $6.51 for illegal purchases.
StatCan has said caution should be used when interpreting crowdsourced findings, noting a limited number and self-selected pool of data.
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