Amount of cannabis sold in Canada remains steady in February

While cannabis sales in Canada fell for the second straight month in February, daily purchases rose 4 percent. Canadians spent nearly $ 263 million on legal recreational herbs in the shortest calendar month, down 5.9 percent from $ 283 million in January, according to the latest retail sales from Statistics Canada. But daily expenses rose to an average of $ 9.39 million for the 28 days of February, up from $ 9.02 million a day in January. National adult cannabis sales hit a record high of $ 298 million, or $ 9.61 million per day, in December. Sales in February rose 74 percent over the same month last year. StatsCan notes that ongoing Covid-19 restrictions in many provinces continued to affect Canadian retail as a whole. British Columbia had sales of $ 36.9 million in February, a monthly decrease of nearly 9 percent. But Evergreen cannabis store owner Mike Babins says the Covid protocols have resulted in increased spending at his Vancouver, B.C. location. "We're seeing more and more users turning to the legal side - who wants some random dealer to show up at your door during a pandemic," he said in an email to Mugglehead. Babins notes that falling flower prices and the increased quality of high-quality products are attracting customers to the legal market. You can get better weed for less money in legal stores, he says, and you know it comes from a sanitary facility. An increase in spending by senior citizens and soccer mothers replacing their nightly wine consumption with an edible product or two also keeps Evergreen sales stable, according to Babins. Ontario was the only province to see a slight increase in cannabis sales in February, due to the increasing number of store openings in that province. The country's most populous province recorded sales of $ 87.8 million, a monthly increase of 0.7 percent. In mid-February, Ontario's cannabis regulator increased the pace of licensing cannabis stores to 120 permits per month. Previously, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario had issued 40 retail licenses per month.