One of the largest hurdles facing the legal market that hasn’t been well addressed are issues surrounding quality.  While it’s definitely a more difficult variable to quantify, a number of surveys and reviews have shown that many consumers are dissatisfied with the quality on offer.  Many of the quality control issues ultimately tie into supply.  Canada already had some of the highest rates of consumption in the world, and that number has only increased since legalization. Put simply, the supply of cannabis is still being outstripped by the incredible demand.  Most of the licensed producers are struggling to simply get enough product out the door, meaning that a lot of inferior pot is being shipped out in the process. To offset the issue, it’s the experienced users who routinely hit up their black market dealer during prohibition that are the least likely to tolerate these problems.

Another major culprit behind the persistence of the black market is a simple case of basic economics. While many are attracted to the idea of purchasing cannabis from a regulated source, at the end of the day there will always be those who simply aren’t going to buy legal when unregulated product is cheaper. For example, the average price in April 2021 for a gram of cannabis sold legally in Canada is $9.99 verses $6.40 for a gram of black market cannabis.  To make matters worse according to statistics Canada the gap between legal and illegal cannabis is $4.72 per gram on average.

One of the biggest issues and probably the simplest explanations is that there’s not enough of the legal stuff to go around. While the issue has improved in many regions in the past year, cannabis shortages have plagued provinces throughout the country, particularly in the early days of legalization.  Many retailers found themselves unable to stock product for days at a time. Health Canada is showing high levels of inventory, but critics have rightly pointed out that a significant amount of that product is unfinished and not ready to sell.

Despite all of these problems it’s important to put things in perspective.  First and foremost, one fact that has been pointed out constantly is that legalization is still in its early days. The hope is that as the Canadian government and the cannabis industry continue to evolve, we’ll start to see these problems work themselves out. Despite what many anti-cannabis proponents are claiming, the situation is not actually that bad. A number of reports have indicated that the black market sales are indeed declining. One study by Statistics Canada found that illegal sales decreased by 13% over the last year. So while it may not be happening as quickly as the government hoped, it is clear that things are trending in the right direction