Canadian pot smokers are finally getting some price relief almost a year after the country legalized recreational use. But it’s still a lot cheaper to get the drug from illegal dealers.

A gram of cannabis purchased from government-sanctioned sellers cost $10.23 in the third quarter, down 3.9 per cent from the prior three-month period, according to Statistics Canada. At the same time, the price for a gram of pot bought in the illicit market fell 5.9 per cent to $5.59.

The country’s statistics office has been publishing data on prices since before Canada legalized recreational marijuana in October 2018. It uses a crowd-sourcing application to gather information on consumer behavior and web scraping to collect prices from illegal online retailers. The latest reading was the first that showed a quarterly decrease in the cost of legal pot.

Since legalization, illegal prices have fallen 12 per cent and legal prices have gained 4.9 per cent, even with the third quarter’s decline. The price gap has allowed the black market to retain a robust share of Canada’s cannabis market, with 42 per cent of cannabis consumers saying they purchased at least some of their pot from illegal sources in the second quarter.

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