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OTTAWA — The country’s cannabis black market was worth as much as $6.2 billion in 2015 — nearly as much as the wine market, a new report by Statistics Canada estimates.

The report released Monday used several estimates of the price of marijuana to determine the market would have represented around 70 to 90 per cent of the size of the $7-billion wine market in the most recent year it studied.

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Assuming a price range of $7.14 to $8.84 per gram, it also estimated that cannabis was roughly half to two-thirds of the size of $9.2 billion beer sector for 2015.

“The study estimates that the volume of cannabis consumed tended to increase over time from 1960 to 2015, due in part to the increase in consumption among adults,” Statistics Canada said.

The report estimated cannabis consumption in 2015 totalled 697.5 tonnes.

“Indeed, the relative importance of the different age groups to the volume of cannabis consumption is estimated to have changed significantly over time,” the agency said.