Nearly half of Canadians would like to see the legal age for cannabis raised above 19, a poll released Wednesday by the Angus Reid Institute suggests.
Pollsters surveyed 1,500 Canadians at the end of October and found that 26 per cent would like to see a legal age of 21, while another 23 per cent would like to see the age raised even higher.
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Meanwhile, 21 per cent say that 19 – which is the legal age for drinking in B.C. – is the correct limit for pot use, while another 27 per cent want the age to be 18.
In B.C., where legalization day dawned on only one legal cannabis store, residents were more in favour of a lower legal age for pot.
Surveyors found that 56 per cent of people wanted the legal age to stay at 18 or 19, with the majority of those wanting the age to stay at 19.
Across the country, older women and Conservative were more likely than men to want a higher legal age for pot use while 43 per cent of millennial men thought the age should stay at 18.
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B.C. had the highest amount – 17 per cent – of people who were “very pleased” with pot legalization, four per cent above the national average of 13 per cent.
Despite having only one legal brick-and-mortar cannabis store, B.C. residents were the second most likely in the country to have visited one since legalization.
However, only 4 per cent of those surveyed in B.C. actually bought product in-store.
Online, 14 per cent of British Columbians visited a website that sells cannabis but only two per cent actually purchased product.
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