The statistics agency said on Oct. 29 that drug crime rose in 2024 to 128 incidents per 100,000 people, but noted that this “remained well below its historic peak” of 330 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011. StatCan said this decline in drug crime happened because of the legalization of non-medical cannabis and “shifts in police practices.”
According to data from the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, 2024 saw drug crime increase 13 percent from the prior year. There was an increase for most types of drug crime, including 2,272 more cannabis-related incidents, 1,462 more cocaine-related incidents, and 1,105 more non-heroin opioid offences.
Cocaine accounted for 27 percent of drug crimes reported in 2024, followed by cannabis (17 percent), methamphetamine (16 percent), non-heroine opioids like fentanyl and oxycodone (10 percent), and heroin (2 percent).
Drug crime includes the importation and exportation, possession, distribution, sale, and production of drugs.
The report found the Northwest Territories had the highest drug crime rate in 2024 at 2,591 incidents per 100,000 population, which was more than quadruple the next highest rate in Yukon at 555 incidents per 100,000, and more than ten times the rate in British Columbia at 251 per 100,000. The lowest rates were in Ontario (70), Nova Scotia (95) and Prince Edward Island (104).
The city of Vancouver had the highest rate of increase among major cities between 2023 and 2024 at 35 percent, while Gatineau had a 25 percent increase, Quebec City had a 24 percent increase, and Hamilton had a 19 percent increase. Meanwhile, the city of Calgary saw incidents decrease by 81 percent from the previous year.
The report said of the 2.5 million crime incidents reported by police in 2024, just 2.1 percent of those, or 53,002, were drug offences. The rate of possession offences that once made up three-quarters of all drug-related crimes in Canada has dropped by more than 40 percent between 2014 and 2024, while the overall police-reported drug crime rate fell 56 percent in that decade.
Statistics Canada said that the most recent “comprehensive analysis” of drug crime in Canada was more than a decade old, and pre-dated “significant developments” like the legalization of marijuana in 2018 and an escalation of the opioid crisis. The statistics agency said there were nearly 70,000 cannabis-related offences in 2014, making up 66 percent of all drug crime, whereas in 2024 there were just 8,879 offences that made up 17 percent of all drug crime.
StatCan also noted there have been changes to police enforcement and to the guiding principles of legislation related to drug offences in Canada. In 2022, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act was revised to state that problematic substance use should be addressed primarily as a health and social issue, and that judicial resources should focus on drug offences that pose a risk to public safety, as opposed to possession charges.
The agency said both the long-term decline and recent increase from 2023 to 2024 may also be the result of changes in policing practices and enforcement to reflect guidelines issues by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, which direct prosectors to focus on prosecutions for the most serious drug offences.
