Legalisation changes where economic activity is recorded
A legal cannabis market brings transactions into licensed businesses and official statistics. That can create visible sales, employment and tax receipts, but the value of legal sales is not automatically new economic value. Some spending may previously have occurred in an illicit market, while other spending may shift from different products.
The economic question is therefore larger than the size of a market. It concerns who receives income, which costs become public or private, and how purchasing patterns change. Canada provides concrete figures for examining those distinctions; it is not a ready-made forecast for Spain.
Canada recorded C$5.5 billion in recreational sales
Statistics Canada reported recreational cannabis sales of C$5.5 billion in the 2024/2025 fiscal year, up 6.1% from the previous year. The measure covers sales by provincial cannabis authorities and other retail outlets. It describes turnover in a defined period and market.
Turnover is not company profit. Businesses still meet production, staffing, premises, distribution and other costs. Nor is it the same as government revenue: only the relevant taxes and public-sector income enter that account. Treating the full sales figure as a fiscal windfall would count money that belongs to a much wider set of transactions.
Purchasing sources show a different change
In the 2024 Canadian Cannabis Survey,72% of past-year consumers reported a legal store or website as their usual source, compared with 37% in 2019. The 2024 result was essentially unchanged from 73% in 2023. This suggests a substantial longer-term shift toward legal channels rather than uninterrupted annual growth.
The percentage concerns respondents and their usual source. It is not a direct measurement of the share of all cannabis by weight or all spending. A frequent purchaser and an occasional consumer each contribute a response, even though their market expenditure can differ greatly.
Public benefit includes costs as well as receipts
A regulated market also requires administration, inspections and public-health work. Its economic assessment should include these functions alongside revenues. A fiscal balance compares government income and spending; a broader social assessment also considers effects that do not appear directly in a budget.
These are different accounting questions. A business may struggle while the state collects taxes. Legal sales may rise because purchases move out of an unrecorded market rather than because total consumption rises by the same amount. Clear definitions prevent a single headline number from standing in for all outcomes.
What the comparison means for Spain
Spain’s cannabis associations and its medical preparation framework do not constitute the same national retail model as Canada’s. Organic Law 1/2002 governs associations, while Royal Decree 903/2025 concerns standardised preparations for medical magistral formulations. Their economic structures and purposes differ from a general adult-use retail market.
Canadian experience therefore supplies questions and measurable examples, not a transferable revenue promise. Any Spanish reform would produce effects through its own rules on permitted activity, taxation, oversight and market participation. The useful comparison is institutional: which transactions become lawful and recorded, which costs arise, and which people or organisations receive the resulting income.
Sources & further reading
General information, not individual legal or medical advice.