Canadian government statistics for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, show legal recreational cannabis sales reached C$5.5 billion—a 6.1 percent year-over-year gain—while alcohol sales fell 1.6 percent despite a 1.6 percent rise in retail prices, Statistics Canada reported.
The alcohol revenue drop was "the largest annual decrease since Statistics Canada began tracking this series in 2004/2005," the agency said. Total alcoholic beverage sales of C$25.8 billion still exceed cannabis totals, but the diverging figures point to consumers moving away from beer, wine, and liquor toward marijuana.
Cannabis growth slowed from 11.6 percent in 2023-2024 and 15.8 percent in 2022-2023, even as prices fell 1.1 percent over the year. Per-capita cannabis sales came to C$167 per person of legal consuming age.
Inhaled extracts were the fastest-growing cannabis product category. "The market share of inhaled extracts continued to increase in 2024/2025, up to almost one-third of total sales (31.1%)," the report, also noted by ICBC, said. "Solid cannabis edibles (-2.2%) was the lone cannabis category with a sales decline in 2024/2025."
A separate Canadian government-funded study found that alcohol and tobacco cause far more harms to people who consume them, and to society overall, than marijuana does. Additional polling and research point to the same shift: one in three millennials and Gen Z workers now choose THC drinks over alcohol for after-work occasions such as happy hours; a poll from last October found a majority of Americans view marijuana as a "healthier option" than alcohol, with most expecting national legalization within five years; a federally funded study found smoking marijuana is associated with "significantly" reduced alcohol consumption, based on a trial where adults smoked joints in a makeshift bar; and a 2024 study on adults who drink cannabis-infused beverages found a "substitution effect," with a significant majority reporting reduced alcohol use after adding cannabinoid drinks to their routines.
The Trump administration is meanwhile weighing whether to move marijuana out of Schedule I under U.S. federal law, and a recent study concluded that cannabis is not as dangerous as its current classification suggests.
