Cannabis retailers are readying for a bump in sales on April 20 – the day each year known for festive outdoor events where consumers celebrate the mind-altering plant.
A scaled-down public event that is dubbed both a protest and a celebration is set for the public square north of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Black-market operators are set to be at the unsanctioned event selling products. Legal operators that have stores nearby are similarly readying for a boost in sales.
"At 4-20, there's usually a pretty decent bump in sales because, from a cultural perspective, it's a great opportunity to get out [and socialize,]" Dutch Love chief growth officer Harrison Stoker told BIV.
His Donnelly Group-owned company operates legal Vancouver cannabis stores on Robson Street, Hamilton Street, West Fourth Avenue, Main Street and south Granville Street. Three Okanagan stores round out the eight stores that Dutch Love operates in B.C. Eight is the maximum number of stores that the B.C. government allows any individual ownership group to run in the province.
Stoker said Dutch Love plans to run all-day promotions on merchandise that will involve various product discounts that are around 15 per cent.
B.C., he added, is the most profitable provincial jurisdiction in which his company operates because the total number of legal cannabis stores per capita is lower than that in Alberta and Ontario.
Legal cannabis sales in B.C. have steadily risen since Canada legalized adult use in October 2018.
B.C. consumers bought a record $52.36 million worth of legal cannabis in December, according to Statistics Canada.
Legal cannabis sales in the province dipped to $49.99 million in January, which is the most recent month for which the nation's number cruncher has data. January's sales, however, were up 23.8% compared to January 2021. Statistics Canada plans to announce cannabis sales data for February on April 22.
Part of what has kept legal cannabis sales from increasing even more is that those sellers must charge a range of taxes, including a 10-per-cent excise tax, leading some consumers to seek out black-market products – some of which have been shown to include pesticides.
To help level the playing field, the B.C. government last year started to allow legal cannabis retailers to deliver products – something previously banned. Victoria also stopped requiring that all staff in legal cannabis stores be screened by provincial officials, and have a criminal record check done by police. That process costed legal cannabis store owners $100 per employee, and originally took months.
Cannabis activist and Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary director Dana Larsen told BIV that he believes legal cannabis has taken some sales away from black-market operators. Still, he added, consumers who buy a lot of cannabis tend to stick with unlicensed suppliers because their products are less expensive.
"The occasional cannabis users – most people who use cannabis – will have a few puffs on the weekend and smoke a little weed once in a while," he said. "They're not daily users, and they are using a relatively small amount. Those are the people much more likely to go to legal shops."
While Larsen remains passionate about cannabis, he has shifted his focus in recent years toward magic mushrooms, which contain psilocybin.
Health Canada in January launched what it calls a “special access program” that allows physicians to request that the government grant patients access to psilocybin – a substance otherwise illegal to possess and produce. This has prompted biotechnology companies to increase research into the active ingredient, and seek less expensive ways to produce psilocybin.
Larsen operates the Medical Mushroom Dispensary at 651 East Hastings Street, and he said he believes that Canadian legalization of psilocybin will follow a similar path to that of cannabis, with court cases incrementally setting precedents to allow access on Constitutional grounds.
"There's probably going to be around 50 mushroom dispensaries in Vancouver by the end of the year," Larsen said. "There's at least six or seven right now. I mean, mine was the first one and there's gonna be a lot opening up. I'm seeing posters all the time. People are contacting me a lot. It's going to be very, very similar to the cannabis-dispensary boom."
