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When Canada legalized recreational cannabis in October 2018, one concern was that more legal stores would make cannabis easier for young people to access and encourage adolescent use. But does having more cannabis retailers near high schools actually mean more students use cannabis?

Our study suggests the relationship is more complicated. Across more than 419,000 student survey responses collected in four Canadian provinces, we found little consistent evidence that greater access to nearby cannabis retailers was associated with whether adolescents used cannabis.

However, accessibility was associated with more frequent use among existing users during the first year of legalization.

Our research team examined this question in a study published in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence journal. Our findings offer new insight into how cannabis retail accessibility relates to adolescent use as Canada's legal market matures.

We examined student survey data collected between 2018–19 and 2023–24 through the COMPASS study in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Québec. We measured accessibility using the distance to the nearest retailer, the number of nearby stores and a measure that gives greater weight to closer retailers.

Overall, greater retail accessibility was not consistently associated with ever using cannabis, past-year or past-month use, or daily and almost-daily use.

Cannabis use also declined in our study sample. 0% in 2023. 4%. These figures describe students in participating schools, not a nationally representative sample.

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