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The stats show that police attitudes toward pot possession are really an urban-rural divide in the 200 B.C. municipalities we analyzed.

The first time a Metro Vancouver city surfaces in the data is at 21st spot — North Vancouver (rural), with 7.5 police pot-possession files per 1,000 residents. (StatsCan defines rural as outside a city’s core or fringe areas; North Vancouver City was 74th on the list, and North Vancouver District was in 143rd spot.)

The next-highest Metro cities were Coquitlam (rural) in 57th spot and Langley City in 58th, both with around five pot files per 1,000 people.

So how about B.C.’s three largest cities? Kelowna was 73rd with four pot-possession investigations per 1,000 residents; Victoria ranked 131st (2/1,000); and Vancouver was 142nd (1.7/1,000).

This data suggests that British Columbians like to toke, and that while urban police might be turning a blind eye, rural departments are not. However, what the data also tells us is that although B.C. police might investigate, they are less likely to pursue criminal charges compared to their counterparts in other provinces.

B.C. ranks fifth out of the 10 provinces for the number of people aged 12 and older who were charged with pot possession per 100,000 population. Saskatchewan had the highest stats and Newfoundland the lowest.

Hope (rural) had the most pot-possession charges laid in 2015, with 14 per 1,000 residents.

Vancouver — where the police department’s policy is to lay charges based on a person’s behaviour while using a drug, rather than the actual unlawful possession — is near the end of the list, with far less than one charge per 1,000 people.