Why Is It Easier to Buy Weed Than Rent an Apartment in Canada?

Photo by Brett Sayles

In Canada, you can walk into a dispensary with nothing but your ID, buy a 30-gram stash of top-shelf flower, and be on your way in under 10 minutes. Want to rent a one-bedroom apartment in a half-decent city? That’ll take your entire life savings, a blood sample, your SIN, and a personality test. Welcome to 2025.

Let’s be real: legal cannabis is one of Canada’s biggest policy wins in recent memory. But the same country that made it easy to light up is also making it damn near impossible for people—especially young, working-class, and marginalized folks—to find a place to live. Something doesn’t add up.

Housing Crisis vs. Legal Weed: The Irony Is Wild

Think about it:

• You need proof of income, credit checks, references, first and last month’s rent, and sometimes a co-signer to even get a response on a rental application.

• Meanwhile, you can walk into any dispensary in Canada, show your ID, and legally purchase enough cannabis to stay high for a week with no questions asked.

  
  

Weed: legal, accessible, regulated.Housing: a chaotic, overpriced, algorithm-driven nightmare.

What happened to “basic needs” first?

Weed Is Regulated. Rent Is Unhinged.

The cannabis industry is heavily regulated. There are track-and-trace systems, lab testing requirements, age restrictions, marketing rules, and purchase limits. And yet? It works. You can access legal weed safely, quickly, and affordably (depending on the province).

Now let’s look at housing:

• Rent is outpacing inflation in every major city.

• There’s no national rent cap or unified tenant protections.

• Real estate investors are snatching up units and Airbnb-ing them for triple the profit.

• “Affordable” housing? Mostly smoke and mirrors.

• You’re expected to make at least $80,000 a year to afford a one-bedroom in Toronto without roommates or a third job.

  
  

So somehow, governments managed to build a functioning national cannabis framework, but when it comes to housing people, we get half-baked promises and “market forces.”

The Stoner is Now the Responsible One?

It used to be that stoners were seen as lazy, unmotivated, unproductive. But in 2025, many of us are:

• Holding multiple jobs

• Paying off student loans

• Building side hustles

• Paying taxes

• And yeah, smoking to deal with the stress of all that

  
  

The irony? Landlords will still side-eye your cannabis use, but have no problem renting to someone who’s hoarding 12 leases under one holding company.

Welcome to the new stigma. You’re “not a good tenant” if you use cannabis for anxiety. But you’re a model landlord if you charge $2,600/month for a shoebox with no laundry and call it “urban minimalist.”

Canada, We’ve Got It Backwards

The fact that buying weed is easier than finding housing should be a wake-up call—not for stoners, but for policymakers. Weed legalization was a massive win. It took community pressure, smart policy, and government willpower to make it happen.

So… where’s that same energy for housing?

If we can:

• Build a regulated national cannabis system in under 5 years

• Track every gram sold from seed to shelf

• Control advertising, safety, and access…

  
  

Then we sure as hell can figure out how to make rent affordable, stop real estate hoarding, and treat housing like the human right it is.

Final Puff

It shouldn’t be easier to get an ounce of weed than to get a lease. But here we are. In a country where stoners can get regulated cannabis faster than families can find stable housing, something is deeply broken—and it’s not your lighter.

We legalized weed. Now it’s time to decriminalize being broke.