Ontario will try to sell legal marijuana for a price low enough to squash the black market.
The government plans to establish a price for recreational marijuana that isn’t too high in order to eliminate illicit sales, Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa told reporters after a cabinet meeting Wednesday. Ontario has been pitched a price range of C$8 ($6.50) to C$13 a gram, and is consulting provinces across the country to determine “a unified price,” he said.
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“It’s important for us to establish a price that’s not too high because we want to keep the illicit market under control and we want to eliminate that,” Sousa told reporters, according his spokeswoman Jessica Martin. “But at the same time we don’t want to price it too low that encourages greater use.”
Ontario was the first province to announce how it will regulate and distribute sales of marijuana when Canada moves to legalize recreational sales by next July. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario will open as many as 150 government-run cannabis stores by 2020 and manage the sale and distribution of marijuana along with online sales.
