Tobacco sales

Background

Since 2001, tobacco companies have been required by Tobacco Reporting Regulations to report sales of tobacco products. They provide these sales reports to Health Canada. Tobacco companies submit the reports:

• monthly for cigarettes and fine-cut tobacco
• quarterly for cigars, smokeless tobacco and pipe tobacco

The data here represent total annual sales volume for each tobacco product category. Data are available nationally and by province or territory.

There are 3 important factors to consider when using these data:

• The data may be occasionally revised due to re-submissions by tobacco companies or audits by Health Canada.
• Sales are shipments by tobacco companies to wholesalers or retailers in a province or territory. Sales do not include individual purchases from retailers. Sales totals may not represent actual tobacco consumption for that province or territory.
• In certain cases, provincial or territorial sales could not be reported due to a limited number of companies active in that market. In these cases, the data were merged into a larger geographical group.

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