Nunavut pays more for cannabis than rest of Canada, StatCan says

“Statistics Canada needs your help collecting cannabis prices. Tell us about your last purchase of dried cannabis—submissions are anonymous!” That’s the message to people on the Cannabis Stats Hub, whose graphic is shown here.

Nunavut residents pay a big premium for marijuana, according to Statistics Canada.

The agency released on Friday new information on cannabis prices across Canada, under the auspices of its new online Cannabis Stats Hub—also dubbed StatsCannabis.

The hub’s price data is based on the answers to voluntary online surveys. It says that users in Nunavut pay $9.52, nearly $4 more per gram of cannabis than the national average of $6.83 for a gram of cannabis, and almost twice more than in Quebec, where a gram of cannabis costs only $5.88.

But there’s some good news for those who like their weed in Nunavut: the cost per gram has dropped from $11.34 in 2010.

Medical marijuana sells still for an average of $10.47 in Nunavut.

In the Northwest Territories the cost of a gram of cannabis is $11.46, according to Cannabis Stats.

These figures all come from people who provided information voluntarily on the Cannabis Stats hub for Jan. 25 to Feb. 28. You are still able to contribute information online/.

The goal of the survey is to create “a rich open set of data all Canadians will be able to use to better understand the transition towards legalization,” according to the hub’s web page.

In the survey, respondents are asked to report if they use cannabis on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis, how much they use, what they pay, whether it’s of good quality and what jurisdiction they live in.

The majority who reported information so far indicated that they use cannabis on a daily basis.

Those who reported daily use indicated that they consume an estimated 28 grams of cannabis per month—that is, about one gram per day. Individuals who consume less than once per day indicated that they consume 6.3 grams of cannabis per month.

In Nunavut, a daily use habit could cost you more than $250 a month.

The majority of respondents (61 per cent) indicated purchasing high quality cannabis: “Very few Canadians indicated they were purchasing low quality cannabis,” Cannabis Stats’s report said.

The report also included information on cannabis offences from 2016. In it, Nunavut showed more than double the rate of offences for possession than nationally and more than 15 times the rate for trafficking.

Arrests for drug-impaired driving were also about three times more common in Nunavut in 2016 than overall in Canada.

Nunavut has also been collected public feedback from people in the territory on cannabis, which is heading towards legalization in Canada.

The deadline for comments on the territory’s future cannabis regulations wrapped up March 9.