Py 3: How to switch application to Unicode strings?

[Gnarlodious]

I am using Python 3, getting an error from SQLite:

sqlite3.ProgrammingError: You must not use 8-bit bytestrings unless
you use a text_factory that can interpret 8-bit bytestrings (like
text_factory = str). It is highly recommended that you instead just
switch your application to Unicode strings.

So... how do I switch to Unicode? I thought I was doing it when I put

# coding:utf-8

at the start of my script.

-- Gnarlie