RESEARCH · KEY NUMBERS · 2026
Psilocybin in Canada: key numbers.
34 figures you can cite, each with the year it refers to, its source and the day we checked it. How many Canadians use psychedelics, who gets lawful access, what is being studied and what the law says.
Checked · Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link · How to cite · Methods and caveats
Educational information only. These are published figures, not medical or legal advice, and nothing here says what is lawful for you to do.
Use and surveys.
Health Canada’s national surveys ask about psychedelics or hallucinogens as a group, not psilocybin alone. The 2023 survey changed its method, so Health Canada advises against comparing it with 2019.
6%
of people aged 15 and older in the provinces used a psychedelic (the survey’s examples include magic mushrooms, psilocybin and LSD) in the past 12 months
Survey run May to December 2023. Psychedelics were the most common illegal substance in the survey. The category also covers LSD, mescaline, peyote, 2C and NBOMe drugs.
16%
of people aged 15 and older had used a psychedelic at least once in their life
Adults who had used one reported a first use, on average, at age 20 to 21.
12%
of youth and young adults aged 15 to 24 used a psychedelic in the past 12 months, more than twice the adult figure (5%)
12% vs 3%
past-year psychedelic use among people who rated their mental health poor or fair, compared with very good or excellent
A survey association. It does not show that one causes the other.
587,000
Canadians aged 15 and older used a hallucinogen (LSD, PCP or psilocybin, for example) in the past year, about 2% (1.9%)
Health Canada called this unchanged from 2017.
443,000
Canadians aged 15 and older used a hallucinogen in the past year, about 1%
From the 2017 Canadian Tobacco, Alcohol and Drugs Survey, as restated in the CADS 2019 summary.
11.8%
of Canadians aged 15 and older had used a hallucinogen at least once in their life
95% confidence interval 10.9% to 12.7% (table 15).
14.9%
lifetime hallucinogen use in Alberta, the highest of the ten provinces (British Columbia 14.2%, Ontario 10.6%)
Provincial samples are small; the confidence intervals overlap (table 16).
4.0%
of students in grades 7 to 12 used a hallucinogen in the past 12 months, the most common of the illegal drugs the survey asked about (3.5% in 2018-19)
Nine provinces; New Brunswick did not take part.
Lawful access.
Health Canada publishes no running total for psilocybin access. These are the official or officially sourced figures we could find, with their dates.
304
Special Access Program requests for psilocybin authorized, out of 436 processed (69.7%)
Counts requests, not patients.
59.1%
of psilocybin requests to the Special Access Program authorized in 2024 (107 of 181), down from 82% in 2022
50
patients Health Canada had authorized psilocybin for through the Special Access Program
A count of patients, so not comparable with the request counts above.
16
clinical trials involving psilocybin Health Canada said it had approved, 13 of them since the start of 2022
19
health care practitioners granted section 56 exemptions to use psilocybin in 2020, as reported by CBC News
A news report. We found no official total of section 56 exemptions.
Clinical trials.
Counted from a ClinicalTrials.gov snapshot taken on 2026-10-26: every study with “psilocybin” as an intervention and at least one site in Canada. The live tracker may show different numbers since.
41
registered psilocybin studies with at least one site in Canada, in any status
16
of those studies listed as recruiting
23
studies with a site in Toronto
21
Canadian cities with at least one registered psilocybin study site, across 5 provinces
18
studies registering depression or another mood condition, the most-studied group
Our plain-language grouping of each study’s registered conditions.
9
studies whose lead sponsor the registry classes as industry; the other 32 are universities, hospitals, investigators or foundations
11
studies giving a primary completion date in 2027
The registry’s own anticipated date for the last primary measurement, not a date for results.
The law.
Maximum penalties as the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act states them. They are ceilings, not usual sentences, and this is not legal advice.
Schedule III
where psilocybin and psilocin are listed in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (items 12 and 11)
3 years
maximum prison term for possession of psilocybin if the Crown proceeds by indictment (s. 4(6))
$1,000
maximum fine for a first possession offence prosecuted summarily (or up to 6 months in prison, or both)
10 years
maximum prison term for trafficking, importing, exporting or producing psilocybin by indictment (18 months if summary)
1 of 3
readings in the House of Commons completed by Bill C-286, a private member’s bill on psilocybin; it is not law
LEGISinfo lists it outside the order of precedence.
Science and species.
How many mushrooms contain psilocybin depends on what is counted: names, bluing species or species actually tested in a lab.
About 165
species in the genus Psilocybe in the strict, DNA-based sense
About 45
accepted Psilocybe species in which psilocybin had actually been measured
300+
psychedelic mushroom species across several genera, a review’s round figure
The same sentence also counts Amanita, whose compounds are different.
17 of 58
species in our atlas where modern analyses confirm psilocybin; 31 more rest on one or older reports, 7 are disputed and in 3 it was not detected
11 genera. Each species page cites the chemistry papers.
32
of the 58 atlas species have at least one GBIF occurrence record from Canada
Records include unverified observations; they show where a name was recorded, not where it grows.
Research volume.
Counts of MEDLINE records in Europe PMC with “psilocybin” in the title or abstract, by publication year. Records, not studies: reviews and protocols count too.
464
papers worldwide mentioning psilocybin in the title or abstract
24
papers worldwide on the same search ten years earlier
55
of the 2025 papers with “Canada” in an author affiliation, up from 4 in 2020
Methods and caveats.
Surveys
- Health Canada’s surveys ask about a drug class. The 2023 survey’s “psychedelics” include magic mushrooms and psilocybin along with LSD, mescaline, peyote, 2C and NBOMe drugs (questionnaire). The 2019 survey’s “hallucinogens” include LSD, PCP and psilocybin. No national survey we found reports psilocybin on its own.
- The 2023 survey (renamed the Canadian Substance Use Survey) changed how people were recruited and over-sampled people aged 15 to 24. Health Canada says not to compare it with 2019, and its technical notes say the change may have led to higher estimates of substance use than in 2019.
- Surveys cover people aged 15 and older in the ten provinces, not the territories, and rely on self-report. Provincial and age-group figures come from smaller samples; check the confidence intervals in Health Canada’s tables before comparing them.
- The student survey covers grades 7 to 12 in nine provinces in 2021-22 (New Brunswick did not take part).
Access figures
- Special Access Program figures for 2022 to 2024 are Health Canada data obtained under Access to Information and reported in a peer-reviewed comment; they count requests, not people. Health Canada has not published newer psilocybin figures that we could find.
- We found no official total of section 56 exemptions. The one figure shown is from a news report and is labelled that way.
Clinical trials
- Counted from a saved ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 answer (intervention “psilocybin”, location “Canada”) taken on 26 October 2026, the same snapshot as our annual report. Registry records are entered by each study team and can be out of date; dates may be anticipated rather than actual.
- A location search misses Canadian-led studies run only abroad and studies not on ClinicalTrials.gov. Health Canada’s own clinical trials database is a separate source and does not line up exactly.
Law, species and papers
- Penalties are the maximums in sections 4 to 7 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, re-read on Justice Laws on 24 October 2026. Courts decide sentences case by case.
- Species totals depend on what is counted. Our atlas counts only species whose chemistry has been studied, with the evidence on each species page.
- Paper counts are Europe PMC hit counts for MEDLINE records:
(TITLE_ABS:psilocybin) AND PUB_YEAR:<year> AND SRC:MED, and(TITLE_ABS:psilocybin) AND AFF:Canada AND PUB_YEAR:<year> AND SRC:MEDfor Canadian affiliations. Records, not studies; affiliation matching depends on each record’s data, so Canadian counts are a floor. Each number in the table links to its query.
How to cite this page.
Shroomverse. (2026, October 26). Psilocybin in Canada: key numbers (2026). https://www.theshroomverse.com/research/psilocybin-canada-statistics
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