Weed woes: Canada struggles to meet huge demand for legal cannabis

Numerous stores dealing with empty shelves and disgruntled customers, with fears many consumers will turn to black market

Trevor Tobin opened one of Canada’s first legal cannabis stores last month, he had high hopes of playing a small part in a historic national experiment – and of making a tidy profit.

A woman smokes a marijuana cigarette in Toronto. A mix of retail chain distribution and logistical kinks have created fertile ground for the shortages. Photograph: Ian Willms/Getty Images

Brimming with optimism, he and his mother Brenda pooled $100,000 in savings to create High North, one of the few private retailers in Newfoundland and Labrador.

“There is not enough legal marijuana to supply all of recreational demand in Canada,” said Rosalie Wyonch, a policy analyst at the CD Howe Institute. “The shortages are happening faster than I would have expected, but our research suggested quite strongly that there would be shortages in the first year of legalization.”