Lawmakers in Canada approved national adult-use cannabis legalization in 2018, making it the second country to approve the public policy change. Only Uruguay approved national legalization before Canada.
Leading up to the enactment of national recreational legalization, cannabis opponents in Canada and beyond the nation’s borders made predictions that the cannabis usage rate among young people would skyrocket, pointing to a hypothetical doomsday scenario that opponents consistently indicated would be inevitable. As time has gone on, those claims made by opponents have yet to materialize.
A team of researchers affiliated with various academic universities based in Canada recently examined reported cannabis usage rates among a cohort of almost 40,000 students in grades 9 to 12 from before legalization was implemented. That data was then compared to the reported rates of a similar cohort of students from four years after legalization took effect. The researchers’ findings were published in the journal Addictive Behaviors Reports.
“COMPASS Study data from students across 85 secondary schools that participated in both the T1 and T2 waves were used. A novel classification tree approach examined current cannabis use (past 30-day), modelling complex interactions among multiple risk factors simultaneously in the T1 and T2 samples.” the researchers wrote about their methodology.
“At T1, 15.0 % of students reported current cannabis use, compared to 12.3 % of students at T2. The classification tree at T1 identified six unique risk profiles.” the researchers found after comparing pre- and post-legalization data.
“Cannabis never use increased and current cannabis use slightly decreased among underage youth in a 4-year period spanning cannabis legalization.” the researchers concluded. “The relative importance ranking of risk factors for predicting current cannabis use changed considerably from T1 to T2. This suggests that prevention efforts need to adapt over time to target the relevant risk factors associated with cannabis use.”
Canada remains the only country on earth where anyone of legal age can make a legal recreational cannabis purchase from retailers nationwide, regardless of their residency status. Uruguay still limits legal adult-use cannabis sales to residents only, and Malta, Luxembourg, Germany, and South Africa do not currently permit legal adult-use cannabis commerce like what occurs in Canada.
The Czech Republic has also adopted a national adult-use cannabis legalization measure. However, the law does not take effect until January 1st, 2026, and Czechia’s legalization model does not include permitting licensed recreational cannabis retail outlets.
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