Course: National Retail Sales of Alcohol and Cannabis During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada
CME Credits: 1.00
Released: 2021-11-04
There is concern that the societal consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic will be associated with increased substance use. Data to date have primarily been self-reported changes, but objective sales data may inform this question. Here, we examined national retail sales of alcohol and cannabis prior to and during the pandemic in Canada.
Where applicable, the report for this economic evaluation is consistent with the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards () reporting guideline. The Hamilton Integrated Research Ethics Board determined that ethical review board approval and informed consent were not needed because the data were publicly available sales metrics. The data were seasonally adjusted national monthly retail sales (ie, North American Industry Classification System codes 4453, for beer, wine, and liquor stores, and 453993, for cannabis stores) from November 2018 to June 2021 in Canadian dollars. The period was selected to provide a sizable prepandemic window and because of the timing of cannabis legalization (ie, mid-October 2018). Principal analyses were contrasts between intrapandemic sales and a counterfactual intrapandemic linear trend based on prepandemic sales. A subanalysis quantified stockpiling, operationalized as the proportionate change in March 2020, when states of emergency were declared, compared with the counterfactual estimate. Because the data were population level, null hypothesis significance testing was a secondary priority, but overall differences and intrapandemic trends in poststockpiling data were examined statistically using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and segmented regression, respectively. Significance tests used P?<?.05 and were 2-sided, and analyses were conducted from May to August 2021 using Excel version 2019 (Microsoft), SPSS statistical software version 26.0 (IBM), and R statistical software version 4.1.1 (R Project for Statistical Computing).
Educational Objective
To identify the key insights or developments described in this article
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