It’s almost been a year since the legalization of marijuana across Canada.
According to a report done by the province, Smithers is third (per-capita) in purchasing legal weed online.
The data was collected through a community population 2016 census with the total number of transactions starting in October 2018.
The report showed that every 2.35 people were buying pot through the legal website. It also showed cities in the south like Vancouver and Abbotsford were the lowest per capita.
Michael Armstrong, pot industry expert says if there is no store in the community people would have no choice but to go online.
“Small centers like Smithers probably didn’t have much of that. There might’ve been somebody local growing the stuff but not actually having a dispensary. So if there wasn’t somebody growing or if you didn’t have the contact then online would’ve been your only option,” he said.
Retail stores have been hard to come by in B.C. Especially in the North. Smithers is expected to get its first legal pot store, Rural Leaf in September.
Armstrong also said the main issue was producing enough cannabis.
“The industry really struggled, they seem to grow the plants but they had trouble actually processing it, getting it out the door as a finished product, so through the fall and the winter that was the bottleneck of the system,” he said.
Cannabis became legal in Canada on October 17. 2018, where stores were legal in the new year.