Cannabis retail sales rose 6.4 per cent in January year over year, according to data from Statistics Canada.Lars Hagberg/The Canadian Press
Canadian alcohol sales are dripping lower while the cannabis market is sparking up, driven by shifting consumer behaviour and cost trends.
January retail sales of beer, wine and liquor are down 1.3 per cent year over year, new Statistics Canada data show. Cannabis retail sales climbed 6.4 per cent over the same period.
The increase in cannabis sales doesn’t come as a surprise to Ivan Ross Vrána, a consultant who previously spent more than a decade as a policy analyst for Health Canada, including work on the cannabis file.
“Cannabis, even at the retail level, is a lot cheaper than was ever imagined during legalization,” Mr. Ross Vrána said.
The cannabis industry is likely capturing a portion of consumers who are opting to buy less alcohol, he said, adding that social norms around cannabis are still evolving after its legalization.
Liquor in Ontario corner stores hasn’t led to an explosion in alcohol sales, as some feared
But it’s difficult to say with certainty that because alcohol sales are dropping, Canadians are turning to marijuana instead, said Rod Phillips, an alcohol historian at Carleton University.
Canadian alcohol consumption per capita fell from 101.6 litres in 2017 to 82.7 litres in 2025, according to a recent ATB Cormark Capital Markets report.
Prof. Phillips said alcohol sales have been crumbling for a variety of reasons over the last four years: “We’re looking at a trend – this is not a one-year blip.”
Prof. Phillips, 78, said that as a baby boomer, his generation came of age when heavy drinking was the cultural norm. But over the decades he has spent instructing university students, he has watched interest in alcohol steadily decline.
“People like me – who have a long career of drinking – we’re going to die, and the whole structure of drinking culture is going to change,” he said.
He said young people today appear more concerned with public-health messaging about the short- and long-term risks linked to drinking, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Does cannabis help you sleep? So far, the science is unclear
Prof. Phillips said “it is hard to tell” how the Canadian cannabis market will evolve in coming years, particularly as the scientific body of evidence relating to cannabis and human health continues to grow.
“Alcohol is very, very expensive,” while cannabis is less cost-prohibitive, he added. Prof. Phillips said that a student in his history of alcohol class shared that they recently paid $27 for a cranberry cocktail on a night out.
“That’s a lot of money when you think about what that could buy in the way of food.”
For some Canadians who are putting down alcohol in favour of cannabis, the choice is about their physical health just as much as their financials.
Matthew Withers, 29, said that young adults like himself became accustomed to enjoying substances at home instead of in spaces such as bars and nightclubs during COVID-19 lockdowns. Over the years, he’s noticed that convenient options to obtain cannabis have skyrocketed, with dispensaries on every city corner and same-day delivery options.
Mr. Withers, a business administration student in Kingston, Ont., said the high price of alcohol isn’t worth the morning headache he wakes up with after even one drink.
“If you’re going out and spending $10 on one drink to then feel awful, it doesn’t really make sense to me,” he said.
As an introvert in his 20s, Matt Coultes said he would use alcohol to break the ice in social settings. But over the years, Mr. Coultes, now 43, started to favour cannabis, which relaxes him without the intense stomach pains that he experiences after drinking.
Mr. Coultes, a project manager from Hamilton, Ont., vapes marijuana daily and takes edible gummies on occasion. He said different strains can energize or relax him, and cannabis costs about half of what he would pay to drink regularly.
He believes it is “an interesting double standard” that offering a guest a beer is considered a polite norm, while it might be unusual to offer a visitor a joint.
Mr. Coultes wishes there were more options to enjoy cannabis in a bar-like setting.
“I’ve been doing it long enough that the stigma doesn’t bother me,” Mr. Coultes said. “I guess I’m just used to it.”