The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction is excited share with you a new way to determine how many people use substances in Canada, developed in partnership with the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR). Understanding substance use trends by region, time and demographics can help inform evidence-based policy decisions and direct resource allocation for prevention, treatment and harm reduction efforts.
Their newly released Prevalence Interactive Chart, part of the Canadian Substance Use Costs and Harms (CSUCH) project, is the only national resource that shows what groups use different substances across Canada by age, sex and year.
It builds and expands on foundational work by others including Health Canada, Statistics Canada, Canadian Institute for Health Information and other national, provincial and territorial agencies.
The data reveal, for example:
- The number of people who used cannabis at least once in the past year has increased by approximately 40% since 2017. Prevalence of cannabis use rose from just over 21% in 2017 to nearly 29% in 2023. Young males aged 15-35 reported the highest use, increasing from about 33% in 2017 to almost 43% in 2023.
- Weekly alcohol consumption per person aged 15 and older decreased from 10.4 to 9.4 standard drinks from 2008 to 2023, a 9.6% decrease. That works out to Canadians consuming 34 million fewer standard drinks every week.
- Opioid use, both prescription and illegal, is declining but deaths are still high due to the increasing toxicity of the unregulated drug supply. This supports CCSA’s previous findings.
We invite people designing government policy or public health programs, advocacy groups, researchers, health professionals and anyone with an interest in patterns and trends in legal and illegal substance use in Canada to explore this unique, easy-to-use online resource. Please share with your networks.