Canadians are smoking marijuana more than twice as much as they did in 1985.
According to a federal Statistics Canada report released Wednesday, pot use has stayed about the same for teenagers but dramatically increased among adults.
The Justin Trudeau government’s plans to legalize recreational cannabis by July 1 prompted the study, which studied marijuana use among those aged 15 years and older: overall consumption went from 5.6 percent in 1985 to 12.3 percent in 2015.
The report also found that use was increasing among teenage boys but decreasing for teenage girls.
One of the methods used to gather data was wastewater analysis.
“Given the difficulty in obtaining this information and the level of detail required by data users, Statistics Canada is using non-traditional methods to acquire as much information as possible. One such method is the use of wastewater analysis to measure drug consumption levels in the general population,” the government website states.
“One of the things that’s changing is respondents’ attitudes toward cannabis use over time, as well as perhaps their willingness to declare drug use in a survey,” Michelle Rotermann, a Statistics Canada senior analyst, told CBC News.