Legal cannabis sales overtake illicit market for 1st time in Ontario: OCS

New data shows sales made through Ontario's legal cannabis channels have overtaken those made through the illicit market for the first time ever.

The Ontario Cannabis Store says in its second-quarter report that 54.2 per cent of the pot purchases made in the province between July and September were linked to legal retailers.

The provincial pot distributor says sales made through legal channels totalled $394 million for the quarter, up from $204.3 million in the same quarter last year.

The sales amounted to a record 56 million grams of cannabis.

When recreational cannabis was legalized in 2018, the legal market was responsible for only 5.4 per cent of pot purchases, but that number grew to 19 per cent at the end of 2019 and 44.1 per cent at the end of 2020.

Since legalization, Ontario has been working to minimize the illicit market by slashing prices on products sold through legal channels and raiding unlicensed dispensaries.