Over a million Canadians have been a passenger in a vehicle driven by someone who had consumed cannabis in the previous two hours, according to a government survey.

One in seven Canadian cannabis users had driven at least once within two hours of using the drug in the three months before a government survey was conducted. The Statistics Canada survey also found about 1.4 million Canadians said they had been a passenger in a vehicle driven by someone who had consumer the drug in the previous two hours.

The recreational use of cannabis will become legal in Canada on October 17, 2018. The federal government has been conducting quarterly surveys to try to predict what the social and economic impacts might be.

Most Canadians say they will not consume more once cannabis is legalized.

Not much change planned

In this latest polling done between mid-May and mid-June, 82 per cent of respondents said they probably would not increase their consumption once pot is legalized. That is a similar result obtained in the previous quarter.

Both surveys show that about 4.6 million Canadians aged 15 or older reported using cannabis in the prior three-month period. That’s close to 16 per cent of the population.

Research on impaired driving funded

The government is concerned about impaired driving and is providing a grant of $919,065 over three years for research on the impacts of cannabis on drivers aged 19 to 45. There has also been concern as to how police will be able to determine how much cannabis a driver has consumed.