A quarter of Canadians aren’t any more likely to admit to using cannabis today, even though the drug is now legal, a survey from Statistics Canada suggests.
The data, released this week, was part of a large-scale, $220,000 research project into Canadians’ attitudes about and use of pot prior to legalization.
Of the 13,000 people surveyed, 31 per cent said they were more willing to disclose their cannabis use after Oct. 17, while 24 per cent said they were already open about it.
But 24.9 per cent say they still won’t admit to consuming marijuana, no matter what the laws say.
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Canadians on average were 18.9 years old when they first tried pot.
The highest average age was on Prince Edward Island at 19.5 years and the lowest was in the Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories at 17.2.
In B.C., the average age was 18.5 years old. In Alberta, it was 19.
Researchers found that 18.6 per cent of Canadians used pot daily, a figure that trended up to nearly 21 per cent for men aged 20 to 24.
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A quarter of Canadians used cannabis at least five times each week, with the highest numbers in Newfoundland and Labrador at 30.5 per cent and Ontario at 25.9 per cent.
In B.C. and Alberta, 23.7 and 24.7 per cent told researchers they used at least five times a week.
On those days, 40 per cent the pot users said they were “stoned” for one to two hours, while 8.4 per cent said they were stoned for upwards of seven hours.
Among Canadians who’d used pot in the past year, 89 per cent said they smoked it, 42 per cent said they had eaten it, and 26 per cent said they had vaped it.
