According to research by McMaster University, national retail sales of alcohol and cannabis had risen in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Monthly alcohol sales had increased by approximately 5.5 percent, according to data released from March 2020. For cannabis sales, the increase was nearly 25 percent.
As highlighted in JAMA, researchers had utilized information from Statistics Canada and compared 16 months of sales pertaining to alcohol and cannabis products from before and after the pandemic started.
“In this economic evaluation, mean monthly national retail sales of alcohol, with notable stockpiling, exhibited a monthly increase of 5.5% vs the counterfactual estimate during the intrapandemic period,” the study’s authors reiterated in JAMA.
“For cannabis, although stockpiling was similar, the general intrapandemic increase in mean monthly sales vs the counterfactual estimate was substantially higher, approaching 25%.”
“Interestingly, these results converge with a national study of self-reported pandemic-associated changes that found a similar dissociation between alcohol and cannabis.”
The study was published on November 4th, 2021.
