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Alberta has majority of pot shops in Canada

Seniors are the fastest growing demographic of cannabis users
1310 Cannabis Feat CC 7245
FILE PHOTO/St. Albert Gazette

Some 56 per cent of pot shops across Canada are located in Alberta.

On Friday morning, Kelley Holmes, the manager of cannabis account services for the Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis Commission (AGLC) told the St. Albert Rotary Club that Alberta has the lion's share of cannabis stores in the country. As of Tuesday morning, there were 399 cannabis stores across Alberta, with eight shops in St. Albert.

For Holmes, who has worked for the AGLC on the cannabis file since 2015, one of the most unexpected parts of legalization was the demographic of people using the now-legal drug.

“I thought the industry was going to be predominantly 18- to 30-year-olds, kind of hipsters, using some new products. The fact of the matter is there are a lot of consumers that are 35-plus and a lot of seniors as well,” Holmes said.

“At this point in time, seniors are probably the quickest growing market in the cannabis industry. More and more seniors are using cannabis.”

According to a Statistics Canada study released in October 2019, seniors are the fastest growing demographic of cannabis users but are still consuming the least amount of cannabis, with seven per cent of them consuming the drug. Some 10 per cent of people aged 45 to 64 consume cannabis, while 25 per cent of people aged 25 to 44 do and 26 per cent of people aged 15 to 24.

In 2012, less than one per cent of seniors – around 40,000 – reported consuming, compared to estimates from 2019 indicating that more than 400,000 seniors have used cannabis in the past three months. Thanks to seniors starting to consume the drug, it has increased the overall age of cannabis users, which jumped from 29.4 in 2004 to 38.1 in 2019.

Since the product has been legalized, Holmes said some 30 per cent of the market is legal, with 70 per cent of consumers still opting for illegal product.

“One of the reasons for this is that price. The illicit market is not dealing with all the taxes, bricks and mortar and regulations,” Holmes said.

But Holmes said the legal market is continuously competing for sales.

“(The price of) cannabis started very, very high and so a lot of people haven't swayed away from the illicit market. With that being said, from 15 months ago, prices are dropping daily. And we're becoming much more competitive with the illicit market at this point in time."

Holmes said in Colorado, during its first year of legalization it had around 15 per cent of the market move to the legal market, but in Alberta Holmes estimates the number is between 25 to 30 per cent.

But being in the cannabis industry isn’t quite the gold rush that many predicted it would be.

Holmes said the cannabis industry can be a tough business to be in.

“I think it probably is very similar to similar to a liquor store or a lounge or a bar. The margins aren't that big in the industry. You can open your doors at 10 in the morning and close at 2 the next morning and you can scratch out a living, but the Gold Rush – or the green rush – never actually happened.”


Jennifer Henderson

About the Author: Jennifer Henderson

Jennifer Henderson is the editor of the St. Albert Gazette and has been with Great West Media since 2015
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