In the three years since legalization, Canadian cannabis consumers had increasingly favourable perceptions of legal cannabis products compared to illegal cannabis products regarding quality, convenience, and safety, but to a lesser extent for price, mirroring the results of a similar study examining perceptions of legal products conducted in U.S. states with non-medical cannabis markets [27]. Although most consumers perceived legal cannabis to be more expensive than illegal cannabis, perceptions of price improved over the three years, as did all other perceptions measured. These results are consistent with recent research and industry data demonstrating that the price of legal cannabis has decreased since legalization [2–4, 8, 11]. Given that the price differential between illegal and legal cannabis narrowed in the first three years post-legalization, consumers may have increasingly favourable perceptions of legal cannabis prices in the future [8, 34]. Future studies should examine the implications of decreasing legal cannabis prices: although lower prices may help displace illegal sources, research on the price elasticity of cannabis demonstrates that consumption and initiation increase as price decreases [35, 36]. Therefore, to achieve the public health objectives of the Cannabis Act, pricing strategies will need to consider both the benefits and risks of lower cannabis prices [1].

A safe and regulated cannabis supply is a key objective of the Cannabis Act. The current study indicates that most consumers perceive legal cannabis to be safer to buy and use than illegal cannabis; in contrast, fewer than one in 20 respondents reported that legal cannabis was less safe to use and buy. Acquiring illegal substances commonly comes with a certain level of risk: risk of criminal sanctions and uncertainty regarding product contents, including potency and potential contaminants. Unlike illegally sourced products, legal cannabis is subject to testing and product standards that minimize contaminants [37, 38]. Moreover, legal cannabis products must display THC content and other product information, including ingredients and nutritional information for edible products [9]. In 2022, the federal government launched a public education campaign to highlight the greater safety and product standards for legal cannabis [39]. However, governments must ensure that promoting legal cannabis as ‘safer’ than illegal cannabis does not equal ‘safe’ and encourage non-consumers to initiate use. Regarding the safety of purchasing cannabis, compared to respondents in Québec, respondents in British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland & Labrador perceived legal cannabis as “no different” to buy than illegal cannabis. This likely reflects the extent to which illegal cannabis sources were established prior to legalization in Canada [40]. This was particularly the case in British Columbia, in which previously illegal retail stores were able to apply for legal licenses, and local governments had licensed cannabis dispensaries prior to legalization.

Consumers report that legal cannabis was increasingly convenient to buy across the three years of study. Consumer perceptions mirror the increase in use of legal retail stores as well as the increase in the number of legal retail stores over time across Canada [4]. However, there are large differences in the number of legal stores per capita across provinces, and this is reflected in perceptions of convenience across the provinces in the current study [24, 25, 41, 42]. In general, respondents in provinces with a higher number of stores per capita were more likely to report that legal cannabis was more convenient to buy than illegal cannabis compared to respondents in Québec, the province with the lowest number of stores per capita in 2020 and 2021. Only respondents in British Columbia and Ontario were less likely to report that legal cannabis was more convenient to buy, potentially because Ontario had only recently increased its stores per capita. Indeed, Ontario had the lowest stores per capita in 2019 due to delays in licensing and store openings as well as a restrictive cap on the number of licenses issued. Similar to price, retail policies must strike a balance whereby legal cannabis is more convenient to buy than illegal but does not encourage uptake or initiation from non-consumers. Recent research has demonstrated promise in achieving this balance; however, this research was conducted prior to the introduction of edibles, topicals, and extracts and Ontario’s increase in retail stores [24].

In general, cannabis consumers in Québec had favourable perceptions of legal cannabis with regard to quality and price. Indeed, Québec has had some of the lowest legal cannabis prices since legalization [12, 40, 43, 44]. One could expect that Québec respondents would perceive legal cannabis products as less convenient because Québec has the lowest number of stores per capita across all provinces and has additional restrictions on cannabis products (a THC limit of 30% across all products). However, respondents in only four provinces were more likely to perceive cannabis products as more convenient to buy than respondents in Québec. This could be due to the government strategically selecting store locations that would maximize access to stores across the population – Québec is the most populated province with a government-run retail structure – compared to private-run retail structures where retail stores may be concentrated in urban settings [44]. The current study did not find any consistent evidence that Québec’s more restrictive retail market has translated into unfavourable perceptions of legal cannabis compared to other provinces.

Perceptions of cannabis varied by frequency of cannabis consumption. In the present study, daily or almost daily consumers had less favourable perceptions of the quality, price, convenience, and safety of legal cannabis. Less favourable perceptions for daily consumers may be due to the established relationships with prior illegal sources: frequent consumers may have a stronger relationship with and trust their illegal source [26]. Frequent consumers may also purchase cannabis in larger quantities from illegal sources than legal retail sources permit (30 g of dried flower or non-flower equivalent), which may result in lower prices through quantity discounts [1, 45–47]. Indeed, recent research has demonstrated that price is one of the most important factors in determining whether consumers purchase illegally or legally [45–47]. There is a public health conflict regarding daily consumers, whereby governments need to increase perceptions of legal cannabis to transition the more frequent consumers to the legal market, while also discouraging frequent consumption due to negative health consequences of such use [14, 20].