Uber Technologies Inc has teamed up with cannabis dispensary Tokyo Smoke to allow consumers to place an order with the store.

Canopy Growth-owned Tokyo Smoke will be listed on Uber Eats to allow cannabis consumers in Ontario, Canada to place their order and then pick it up from the store, according to an exclusive report in Reuters. 

The Cannabis Act was introduced in 2018, which established a legal framework for the sale and possession, as well as production and distribution, of cannabis. However, delivering the substance in the country is still illegal.

According to the Government of Canada, results from the National Cannabis Survey in 2019 demonstrated that 42 per cent of consumers purchased cannabis from an illegal source due to higher prices, limited selection, and a scarcity of licensed stores in their area. The idea behind the Uber and Tokyo Smoke partnership is that it will enable consumers to access legal cannabis in order to combat the popular illegal market.

Ontario is 1.076m km squared, and Tokyo Smoke has 27 stores out of 1,000 authorised dispensaries in the province, according to the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS), the sole wholesaler to Ontario’s licensed adult use cannabis stores. The Tokyo Smoke dispensaries are mainly centred around the Toronto area, which has a population of 6,255,000.

Speaking to Reuters, a spokesperson had commented: “We will continue to watch regulations and opportunities closely market by market. And as local and federal laws evolve, we will explore opportunities with merchants who operate in other regions.”

According to a recent update from cannabis analytics company New Frontier Data (NFD), more than CAD$1.3bn (£~0.76bn) cannabis products were sold in the second quarter of 2021 in Canada for recreational use – a 12 per cent growth from the previous quarter. NFD has projects this to grow to $5.2bn by 2025.

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