Who knew so many people liked to smoke marijuana? Only five days after Canada legalized recreational weed, the nation’s retailers have already burned through the majority of their supply, reports Vice. In fact, So many Canadians outed themselves as tokers that many stores ran out of their stock on the very first day.
That day was Wednesday, October 17, and had it gone better, would have been sort of like V-J Day but with more blacklight Pink Floyd posters and Real Housewives binge sessions. As of now, it’s not clear when the legal cannabis will be reupped.
According to Montreal Gazette, in Quebec alone there were 42,5000 orders for cannabis on day one — 12,500 of them in person at a local dispensary, and 30,000 from orders made online. Online, many marijuana-related products — such as oils, sprays, gels, and pre-rolled joints — are listed as currently unavailable.
In Quebec, all marijuana orders are handled by the Societé Québécoise du Cannabis (SQDC), which has stated they will be reassessing how popular legal state weed is and adjust product numbers if they determine that’s higher than they anticipated.
The weed shortage wasn’t a total surprise. As per Rolling Stone, one study released predicted licensed producers would only be able to supply 30 to 60 percent of demand in the first year of legal marijuana, though it’s not clear if their estimated numbers were anywhere close to the — no pun intended — high demand.
In the meantime, Canadians are furious. One jilted person interviewed by the Montreal Gazette, John Matheson, told them when he tried to go the day after it was legalized, he got in line starting at 10 a.m., had to leave to leave to make an appointment at 11:45 a.m., got back in line at 5 p.m., and stood there till 7:45 p.m., at which point store officials announced they were no longer accepting credit or debit cards. This prompted a mass bolt to nearby ATMs.
“There was a lineup of more than 50 people trying to get to the bank machine,” Matheson said. “Finally I just left in disgust.”
Another person, Sean Malthouse, interviewed by the CBC, noted that the government-sanctioned shortage may lead citizens to go back to obtaining weed the way people have been doing for decades.
“These guys are running out of a lot of stuff here already and if that happens, people are going to go back,” Malthouse said. “The dealers are never going to go away if you can’t supply.”
“Perhaps then they would have said ‘Maybe we should be buying it by the truckload rather than the palette load,” Matheson said. “For me the score is: black market 1, government 0.”
Let this be a lesson to all the Americans threatening to move up to the Great White North because of the legal bud: Even a government that’s mostly competent and is run by a handsome, non-insane leader has trouble getting its populace high.
(Via Vice, Rolling Stone, Montreal Gazette, and CBC)
