Psychedelics stores, their regulation and public health: knowledge, perceptions, attitudes and opinions of Canadians.

Abstract

Psychedelic retail stores illegally selling psilocybin, DMT and related substances have proliferated in Canada, with close to 60 brick-and-mortar shops documented in 2023. This echoes the pre-legalization and regulation cannabis landscape. Public responses have remained inconsistent, oscillating between de facto tolerance and enforcement of the law, raising concerns among public health authorities and other stakeholders. How to regulate these stores has become a pressing policy question, yet no research has examined what Canadians know, perceive, and think about the stores and their regulation. A web-based survey of 3,674 Canadian adults was conducted in March 2025 via the Léger Opinion online panel. Descriptive and bivariate analyses examine knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes toward regulatory options and their associations with substance use, proximity to stores, and sociodemographic characteristics. Most respondents were unfamiliar with psychedelic stores (79.1%) or the products sold (80.3%). Among those with some familiarity, risk and benefit perceptions coexisted, with ambivalence being the most common configuration. Respondents were equally divided on closing the stores or maintaining the current unregulated status quo. By contrast, 66.6% supported authorization of sales by stores under a regulatory framework, including among respondents with no direct exposure to psychedelics. Large majorities favored public health protection over fiscal considerations, product restrictions, promotion limits, and caps on store numbers. Despite widespread unfamiliarity with psychedelic retail stores and ambivalent perceptions of their potential risks and benefits, Canadians appear more receptive to their authorization under a legal framework than to the status quo. Attitudinal ambivalence suggests that public support is not fixed and may be shaped by the features of the regulatory framework proposed.