Why Do Canadians Hate to Buy Cannabis Online?

Article by Patrick Cain, Global News

Quebec started legalization with only a dozen cannabis stores to serve the whole province — or one for every 700,000 people.

So Quebecers who wanted to buy legal weed had a choice.

They could try to use the few stores, lining up in the cold and sometimes travelling long distances. (Major centres like Gatineau and Sherbrooke still don’t have stores.)

Or they could order from home online, in their pyjamas if they wanted to.

Overwhelmingly, they chose the harder path: 80 per cent of Quebec’s cannabis revenue has come from bricks-and-mortar retail stores.

In provinces with more retail, almost all cannabis buyers bought it in person: 94 per cent of sales in Nova Scotia and over 95 per cent in New Brunswick were in stores.

“There’s clearly a preference for Canadians to want the touch-and-feel aspect, wanting to go into a store and talk to somebody and sort of get their products, versus going online and buying it through an online channel,” says Deepak Anand, CEO of Materia Ventures, a cannabis supply and distribution company.

Read the full article here.