The percentage of Canadian cannabis consumers who sourced their products from legal sources in the three years after legalization varied across cannabis products, ranging from approximately half of solid concentrate consumers sourcing all their product legally to 82% of cannabis drink consumers. High percentages of cannabis drink consumers sourcing legally could be explained by drinks being a ‘newer’ product category for the legal market that wasn’t as accessible in the illegal markets [26]. Products typically perceived as ‘medical’ products, such as oral oils and capsules, had greater percentages of consumers sourcing all their product legally. Oral oils were available legally for medical purposes prior to 2018; therefore, consumers may have already been sourcing legally through licensed producers before non-medical legalization [31]. Moreover, consumers sourcing ‘medical’ products may prioritize legal products where the quality is regulated, tested, and standardized to better dose their medication. In contrast, solid concentrates and hash products had the lowest percentage of consumers sourcing legally, suggesting the greatest competition between the illegal and legal market is in these products. This may be due to more established consumers having closer contacts with dealers for these products as well as retail stores not stocking these products until later in our study period. Indeed, solid concentrates and hash were reportedly only entering retail stores around April/May 2020 [32].

Different studies have used varied metrics for estimating legal sourcing or purchases of cannabis in Canada. For example, some studies report “overall” sourcing, whereas others report “last purchase”, as well as representing legal sourcing as an overall percentage versus categories (“any” or “all”) [6–8, 10, 33]. These produce different point estimates, but the trends across these different measures are highly consistent in showing that legal sourcing/purchasing has increased, and illegal sourcing/purchasing has decreased since legalization. These trends are also seen in the current study, where legal sourcing of six cannabis products was more likely in 2021 than 2020.

Consumers of six out of 10 cannabis products were more likely to source all their respective products legally in 2021 versus 2020, suggesting that the legal market is becoming more competitive across some types of products. These results mirror the general trend demonstrated by the Canadian Cannabis Survey, whereby consumers are increasingly sourcing all cannabis from the legal market [6–8]. Indeed, the Canadian government has documented increasing legal sales [34]. A study examining Canadian cannabis sales during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that the increase in cannabis sales during this time were more attributable to the expansion of cannabis products in January 2020, rather than to the pandemic [21]. This suggests that consumers were entering the legal market for non-flower products so we may expect the percentage of those sourcing legally to increase in coming years.

We hypothesized that frequent consumers would be less likely than occasional consumers to source legally due to poorer perceptions of legal cannabis [22, 23], loyalty to dealers [23], or the fact that purchase limits in the legal market prevent large quantity discounts [12, 24–26]. However, frequent consumers were more likely to source some of their products legally and were equally likely to source all their respective products legally as occasional consumers. This is particularly important given that frequent consumers consume approximately 80% of all cannabis consumed [35–37], and therefore are an important group to encourage to use the legal market. These findings suggest that frequent consumers, when defined as weekly or daily consumers, are transitioning to the legal market, which was one of the key public health objectives of the Cannabis Act.

The legal cannabis market in Canada differs between provinces in areas such as retail structure, minimum legal age, product standards [13, 14], access to retail stores [15], prices [10, 12], and retail sales [16]. Provincial differences were observed in the sourcing of dried flower, oral oil, vape oils, tinctures, and edibles. Edibles consumers in all provinces were more likely to source all their edibles legally than those in Québec. Québec is the only province to restrict edible products that may appeal to youth and therefore removes the most popular edible forms: candy and chocolate. At the time of writing—August 2022—there were only seven edible products available for purchase from the Québec online store compared to 262 products on the Ontario online store [38, 39]. Québec edibles consumers may not source their edibles legally because their legal options are limited. They may legally make their own edibles at home, but this may not be as convenient as using the illegal market. Home cultivation is also prohibited in Québec, further limiting opportunities to make homemade edibles. Further research is needed to understand whether these restrictions in legal edibles in Québec results in illegal sourcing, homemade edibles, or shifting consumption to other cannabis products that are available to purchase. The lack of regulation in homemade edibles or edibles sourced illegally may be a public safety concern due to inconsistent dosing in products and potential overconsumption.

In contrast, dried flower consumers in Québec were more likely to source all their dried flower legally than those in British Columbia and Ontario, and less likely to do so than those in the Atlantic provinces. Québec has had some of the lowest legal dried flower prices since legalization, making legal dried flower potentially more desirable than illegal dried flower in that province compared to other provinces [10, 12, 26, 40]. Further research should examine how consumption of these products varies across the provinces, and whether substitutions occur between cannabis products in response to price and availability from legal sources.