During the COVID-19 pandemic, more Canadians can engage in quarantine kush, as retail cannabis sales hit new peaks in May.
Data published by Statistics Canada revealed a four quarter swell from April to May, with revenues hitting a whopping $186 million.
“In times like this I do think that vices go up,” Cameron Brown, Toronto cannabis shop spokesperson The Hunny Weed Cannabis Co., said.
Yet Brown claims the Toronto marijuana store, the first licensed venue in the city to open its doors in April 2019, hasn’t seen the surge itself and hasn’t the recreational stores he talks of.
“Everything has really taken a hit this year,” he told CTVNews.ca Tuesday over the phone. Although the business opened four new stores in 2020, since January and February, revenues have fallen by 30%.
The business, which operates its flagship position on Toronto’s Queen Street, relies heavily on tourism and residents leave their homes to go to the offices in downtown. Since mid-March, when most of the nation confronted widespread activity restrictions to avoid the spread of the virus that killed more than 8,800 Canadians, none of those income sources has been involved.
“We’ve seen that business greatly diminish since March. We went on that downward trend for March, April, May and then started to see things picking up in June,” he said. He expects business will increase this month and in August as Toronto gets closer to “Phase 3,” which the city has been excluded from along with other COVID-19 hot spots in Ontario.
Given the StatCan results, Brown believes many pot distributors have reported similar sales declines.
“It begs the question of who is really seeing that influx (in sales) during this period,” said Brown.
It is likely that none of them are, he indicated, because the numbers may clearly represent an rise in the amount of legal weed shops in the world — and in particular in its most populated province. Ontario announced late last year that it would scrap its controversial lottery system for approving new retailers in favor of an open allocation system by 2020. In April, with a specified target of 1,000, the province started granting around 20 retail shop licenses weekly.
“We have said all along that opening more legal stores is the most effective way to combat the illicit market, protect our kids and keep our communities safe,” said Attorney General Doug Downey in a news release in December.
