Cannabis in Canada is legal for both recreational and medicinal purposes. Cannabis was originally prohibited in 1923 until medicinal use of cannabis was legalized nationwide under conditions outlined in the Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations issued by Health Canada, which regulated medical cannabis effective 30 July 2001, and was later superseded by the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations, which also permitted seed, grain, and fibre production under licence by Health Canada.
In response to popular opinion, the legislation to legalize cannabis for recreational use (Cannabis Act, Bill C-45) was passed by the House of Commons of Canada on 27 November 2017; it passed second reading in the Senate of Canada on 22 March 2018. On 18 June 2018, the House passed the bill with most, but not all, of the Senate's amendments. The Senate accepted this version of the Act the following day. The Cannabis Act took effect on 17 October 2018 and made Canada the second country in the world, after Uruguay, to formally legalize the cultivation, possession, acquisition, and consumption of cannabis and its by-products. Canada is the first G7 and G20 nation to do so. This legalization comes with regulation similar to that of alcohol in Canada: age restrictions, limiting home production, distribution, consumption areas and sale times. The process removed cannabis possession for personal consumption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, while implementing taxation and stronger punishments for those convicted of either supplying cannabis to minors or of impairment while driving a motor vehicle.
As of January 2019, online sales of cannabis for recreational use were well underway across Canada, via the provincial or territorial governments. Most provinces also had storefront operations selling cannabis, either operated by the government or private enterprise.
History
Drug prohibition in Canada began with the Opium Act of 1908. Historians often point to the 1922 publication of Emily Murphy's The Black Candle as the catalyst for the addition of the three extra drugs to a list of prohibited substances. Although Murphy's anti-drug screeds were widely read and helped spread the drug panic across the country, historian Catharine Carstairs disputes that the seven-page chapter "Marahuana – a new menace" inspired the inclusion of cannabis as a restricted substance.
Cannabis was made illegal when it was added to the country's Confidential Restricted List in 1923 under the Narcotics Drug Act Amendment Bill after a vague reference to a "new drug" during a late night session of the House of Commons on 23 April 1923. According to one government official, cannabis was outlawed after the Director of the Federal Division of Narcotic Control returned from League of Nations meetings where the international control of cannabis was broached. Cannabis did not begin to attract official attention in Canada until the later 1930s, and even then it was minimal. The first seizure of cannabis by Canadian police was not made until 1937. Commercial cultivation of industrial hemp was forbidden in 1938. Between 1946 and 1961, cannabis accounted for only 2% of all drug arrests in Canada.
In the 1960s, cannabis arrests began to increase rapidly in Canada. For the entire period of 1930–1946, the RCMP recorded only 25 cannabis arrests, but this rose to 2,300 cases in 1968, and to 12,000 cases in 1972. In response to the increased popularization of marijuana and the increase in criminal charges against middle class citizens, the government formed the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, usually referred to as the Le Dain Commission, in 1969 to investigate non-medical cannabis use in Canada. The commission's 1972 report recommended removing criminal penalties for cannabis possession, though not legalization, per se. While the subsequent two federal governments discussed the recommendation, no steps were actually taken to change legislation.
In 2001, the country started a medical marijuana program, managed by Health Canada. The program originally offered people access to home grown cannabis or sales directly from Health Canada. This was replaced with new regulations that set up a more traditional commercial sector for cannabis cultivation and distribution in 2013.
Steps to legalization
Opioid crisis and medical use In the 2010s opioid-related harms were reported as a public health issue in Canada. Health Canada notes for health care professionals that opioid-sparing effects of cannabinoids have been suggested in preclinical, case and observational studies while clinical trial results have been mixed.
Prospective studies and surveys have reported that some medical cannabis patients reduced or stopped opioids, including a prospective study of 115 patients reporting a reduction from 49.9 MME per day to 16.4 MME per day among continuers and a Canadian study of 1,145 patients reporting a decrease from 28% to 11% at six months and surveys reporting 35.3% and 48.6% of respondents substituting opioids. A BMJ Open systematic review found a mean reduction of −22.5 MME per day in observational studies with very low certainty and no clear difference in five randomized trials, and the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has rated the evidence for reduction in opioid use as insufficient. Cannabis is not an established treatment for opioid use disorder as a substitute for methadone or buprenorphine.
Cannabis activism From the 1990s compassion clubs such as the Vancouver Compassion Club provided cannabis to patients with a physician diagnosis on a non-profit basis. Court decisions, including R v Beren and Swallow (2009 BCSC 429), influenced the medical framework, including the designated grower system and authorization of edible use. A June 2016 Nanos Research poll found seven in ten Canadians supported legalization.
In November 2012 Kelly Coulter and Andrea Matrosovs, then representing the women's alliance of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in Canada, met with Trudeau in his parliamentary office to argue for legalization, a meeting that the Toronto Star later reported Trudeau and his advisers traced his shift toward supporting legalization to. NORML Canada Executive Director Jennawae Cavion has described this meeting as part of the organization's advocacy efforts.
Government initiative
In 2015, after he was elected Prime Minister, the first significant step that Justin Trudeau took was the creation of a federal-provincial-territorial task force to discuss a jointly suitable process for the legalization of cannabis possession for casual use. This Task Force on Marijuana Legalization and Regulation released a 106-page report to the public on 13 December 2016, with various recommendations. Those were provided for consideration by the federal and provincial governments, but they were not binding. Sales for recreational use were not to commence until 1 July 2018, at the earliest, based on legislation (Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act) passed by the federal government in June 2018.
The substance remains controlled: it is sold only at government licensed retailers, and grown only by licensed producers. During the federal election campaign, the Liberals had promised "new, stronger laws" against sales to minors, driving while impaired, and sales through channels not specifically authorized to do so.
Until 17 October 2018, cannabis remained illegal (except with a physician's prescription, for medical purposes), as Trudeau reminded police forces across the country in late 2016. He insisted that they "enforce the law": criminally charge illegal storefront dispensaries. Trudeau also explained that the intent of the legislation is not to encourage recreational use of cannabis. The intent is "to better protect our kids from the easy access they have right now to marijuana [and] to remove the criminal elements that were profiting from marijuana", he told the Toronto Star on 2 December 2016.
Police forces took the Prime Minister seriously, and in March 2017, raided five locations of the Cannabis Culture retailer in Toronto, one in Vancouver, and another in Hamilton, Ontario. They also searched homes in Toronto, Stoney Creek, and Vancouver. Multiple charges were laid against Marc Emery and Jodie Emery, owners of Cannabis Culture, a company that franchised pot dispensary shops. The couple was convicted in December 2017 of drug-related charges, including possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking, fined, and placed on two years of probation. Drug-related charges were laid against three others who were also subsequently convicted.
Toronto Police had told the media that the unlicensed cannabis dispensaries are linked to "high-level drug traffickers[...] often tied to organized crime, given the amount of marijuana sold".
First Nations chiefs attending the Assembly of First Nations widely agreed that the distribution of cannabis on reserve lands should be governed by First Nations governments, and not provincial legislation.
Immediately after legalization, licensed growers often had difficulty accessing financial services. Alterna Savings and Alterna Bank were among the first financial institutions to make loans to businesses focusing on cannabis in Canada, providing primary banking services for approximately two-thirds of the hundred licensed growers in 2018.
Final legalization
After the House of Commons passed Bill C-45, it was sent to the Senate. On 1 June 2018, the Senate passed an amendment to C-45 outlawing cannabis "brand-stretching". The amendment, which passed 34–28 in the Senate, would have outlawed the sale and display of cannabis-related merchandise once legalized. The amendment was rejected by the House of Commons.
On 19 June 2018, the Senate finally passed the bill, without the rejected amendment, and the Prime Minister announced the effective legalization date as 17 October 2018. Canada became the second nation (after Uruguay) to legalize the drug.
As expected, the use of cannabis for recreational purposes became legal across the country on 17 October 2018, under the Cannabis Act which "creates a legal and regulatory framework for controlling the production, distribution, sale and possession of cannabis in Canada", according to a Government of Canada web site. Persons aged 18 or older can possess up to 30 grams of dried or "equivalent non-dried form" in public. Adults are also allowed to make cannabis-infused food and drinks "as long as organic solvents are not used to create concentrated products". Each household is allowed to grow up to four cannabis plants from "licensed seed or seedlings", although Quebec and Manitoba chose to be excluded from this aspect of the legislation. There has been a legal challenge against Quebec's decision by a citizen who contested the ban on growing because the federal government allowed growing up to four plants per household. In June 2019 the Quebec Superior court agreed and declared once again in June 2019 that Quebecers could possess and grow as many as four plants. The Quebec government appealed that decision; it was declared by the Quebec Court of Appeal the previous decision was incorrect and that the province had the power to ban Quebecers from possessing and growing any cannabis plants with a simple fine imposed. Presently some Canadian lawyers are in the process of challenging the Manitoba ruling and following that will move on to challenge Quebec; this appears to be a joint effort between TOBA grown and NORML Canada.
As of May 1st, 2025, Canadians in Manitoba are allowed to have four plants per household.