Sales of adult-use cannabis in Arizona hit a record $72 million in March, while purchases of medical cannabis dropped for the fifth month in a row. Regulated sales of recreational pot began in Arizona in January 2021, less than three months after the state’s voters approved a cannabis legalization measure in the November 2020 general election.

The Arizona Department of Revenue this week reported sales and tax revenue figures for March 2022 in the agency’s updated monthly report. The department also revised the reported sales for February 2022, increasing the total by several million dollars.

Sales of recreational pot in Arizona amounted to $72.3 million in March, increasing by more than $2 million over the previous month. Sales of adult-use cannabis were also up more than $2 million in February, following a slight dip in sales in January compared to the month before.

Sales of medical pot dropped to $49.4 in March, marking the first time sales of medicinal cannabis fell below $50 million since sales of recreational pot began last year. Medical sales hit their highest total of nearly $73 million in March 2021, dropping to more than $60 million per month over the next six months. Since October, sales of medicinal cannabis have dropped by more than $1.5 million every month as sales of recreational pot increased. Combined medical and adult-use cannabis sales came to $121.8 million in March.

The Department of Revenue also raised its reported figures for regulated cannabis sales for February. Sales of medical pot were increased for the month by $1.2 million to $53.7 million, while reported adult-use cannabis purchases were adjusted upward by $2.3 million, bringing the new monthly total to almost $71 million. The figure for total cannabis sales for February was revised up to $123.8 million.

Pot Sales Bring Tax Revenue to State Coffers

Cannabis taxes collected were also reported by the department. Arizona levies an excise tax of 16% on recreational pot and customers also pay the state sales tax rate of 5.5%. Medical weed patients pay the sales tax but not the excise tax. City and county sales taxes are also assessed on cannabis purchases.

In March, weed taxes collected totaled $21.3 million, including $4.1 million from sales of medicinal cannabis. Sales tax collected on recreational pot purchases came to $5.6 million, while the excise tax on adult-use cannabis generated $11.6 million in revenue.

“The legalization of cannabis in Arizona has been a boon for our economy and the state tax coffers,” Arizona Dispensary Association executive director Sam Richard said in a statement quoted by the Arizona Mirror. “The financial benefits are important, but the social impact cannot be understated, as citizens no longer have to live in fear of having their lives disrupted by low level marijuana arrests and convictions.”

Last month, a report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that Arizona and five other states raised more tax revenue from cannabis taxes than they did from taxes on alcohol. Together, the 11 states that have legalized sales of adult-use cannabis received about $3 billion in excise taxes on cannabis, while alcohol sales generated around $2.5 billion in tax revenue.

In 2021, Arizona raised $105 million from cannabis taxes, compared to $92 million in alcohol taxes. California received about $832 million in cannabis taxes, approximately twice the revenue generated by alcohol taxes. In Colorado, cannabis taxes totaling $396 million eclipsed alcohol taxes by a magnitude of eight times.

“This is still a small part of state budgets, but it’s a very quickly growing area. There aren’t many revenue sources that grow year over year. This has been a several-year trend now,” Carl Davis, one of the authors of the ITEP study, said in a statement quoted by The Hill. “The early states, what you see is revenue start low and grow very, very quickly.”

The post Arizona Adult-Use Weed Sales Top a Record $72 Million appeared first on High Times.

The post Arizona Adult-Use Weed Sales Top a Record $72 Million appeared first on Paradise Found.

Three months in, the new adult-use cannabis program in Montana has generated tens of millions of dollars in sales, netting $8.7 million in tax revenue.

That comes via the state’s Department of Revenue, which detailed recreational pot sales in the state for the first quarter of the year.

In total, the adult-use market that launched at the start of the year has produced $43,537,110.29 in sales. For comparison, the state’s medical cannabis program generated $29,373,731.81 worth of sales during the same time period.

Montana voters legalized recreational cannabis for adults during the 2020 election, one of four states to end pot prohibition on the ballot that year (Arizona, South Dakota and New Jersey were the other three).

Getting the program ready in time for the start of this year was tight.

Officials in the state didn’t propose their final rules to govern the new regulated cannabis marketplace until October, leaving the Department of Revenue very little time to iron out all the regulations.

“The deadlines are aggressive,” Kristan Barbour, administrator of the Department of Revenue’s Cannabis Control Division, said at the time. “Really, the rules are our biggest challenge.”

“Our focus was really to be business-friendly and to try to work with the industry in a fashion that makes the rules adaptable to their current business structure and that they’ll be able to evolve into without a whole lot of pain,” Barbour added.

But despite the time constraints, the regulated cannabis market was open for business as scheduled on New Year’s Day.

Local television station KTVH reported that an “estimated 380 dispensaries in 29 counties are now able to sell marijuana to both medical and recreational customers.” In the program’s opening weekend at the beginning of January, Montana reported more than $1.5 million in cannabis sales.

The legalization effort in the United States has been buoyed by the economic incentives of regulating sales of pot. A report issued this week by the Marijuana Policy Project drove that point home, revealing that states that legalized adult-use cannabis sales generated more than $3.7 billion in total revenue last year.

That figure represented a 34% uptick from 2020, when states with recreational pot sales generated $2,766,027,570 in revenue. Since 2014, states have generated $11.2 billion in tax revenue from adult-use cannabis sales, according to the Marijuana Policy Project.

“The legalization and regulation of cannabis for adults has generated billions of dollars in tax revenue, funded important services and programs at the state level, and created thousands of jobs across the country. Meanwhile, the states that lag behind continue to waste government resources on enforcing archaic cannabis laws that harm far too many Americans,” said Toi Hutchinson, the president and CEO of the Marijuana Policy Project, who said that the group’s findings serve as “further evidence that ending cannabis prohibition offers tremendous financial benefits for state governments.”

Legalization isn’t just about the money brought in, of course. States that have ended prohibition on pot have also sought to remedy the past injustices brought on by the War on Drugs.

Last month, the Montana Supreme Court issued temporary rules for procedures through which individuals may have past cannabis-related convictions expunged from their records.

The state’s new cannabis law says “anyone convicted of an offense that would now be legal in the state can petition to have their conviction removed from their record, get a lesser sentence for it or reclassify it to a lesser offense,” according to local television station KPAX.

In the rules laid out last month, the state Supreme Court made it clear that they may submit their request for expungement to the court where they were originally sentenced.

The post Montana Adult-Use Sales Top $43 Million For First Quarter of Year appeared first on High Times.

The post Montana Adult-Use Sales Top $43 Million For First Quarter of Year appeared first on Paradise Found.

The Economic Affairs Interim Committee, comprised of members of the state Senate and state House, convened on Monday, where lawmakers passed five changes to help resolve issues with the state’s cannabis industry, which were proposed by the Montana Department of Revenue. 

Montana was one of four states last year where voters approved measures at the ballot legalizing recreational pot (Arizona, South Dakota and New Jersey were the other three).

The law in Big Sky Country was officially codified in the spring, when lawmakers passed House Bill 701, which was then signed by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte.

Notably, the legislation helped establish the HEART Fund, which uses revenue from the newly formed cannabis program to provide funding to substance abuse treatment. 

“Since January, we’ve been focused on implementing the will of Montana voters in a safe, responsible, and appropriately regulated manner. House Bill 701 accomplishes this,” Gianforte said after signing the bill in May. “From the start, I’ve been clear that we need to bring more resources to bear to combat the drug epidemic that’s devastating our communities. Funding a full continuum of substance abuse prevention and treatment programs for communities, the HEART Fund will offer new supports to Montanans who want to get clean, sober, and healthy.”

House Bill 701 empowered the Department of Revenue to oversee the new cannabis policy in Montana, which has led to the ongoing back and forth between the department and state lawmakers. In late October, regulators at the department unveiled rules for the forthcoming recreational cannabis marketplace encompassing more than a dozen different sections of the program: license, application and renewal fees; marijuana manufacturer licenses; marijuana cultivator licenses; marijuana dispensary licenses; marijuana transporter licenses; combined use licenses; marijuana testing laboratory licenses; marijuana storage facility endorsement; worker permits; general labeling requirements; labeling requirements for marijuana flower; labeling of ingestible marijuana-infused products; labeling of non-ingestible marijuana-infused products; labeling requirements for marijuana concentrates and extracts and packaging requirements.

The newly approved rules that were passed on Monday will allow tribal governments to scale up their operations via higher capacity licenses. When lawmakers first approved House Bill 701, each tribe was only given access to tier 1 licenses, which allows indoor cultivation space that did not exceed 1,000 square feet. Now each tribal government is allowed to obtain higher tier licenses. The highest tier is 12 under HB 701, which would allow up to cultivation spaces that do not exceed more than 50,000 square feet, according to Independent Record.

Under the new rules, however, outdoor grow operations are to remain at the same square footage. 

Not all Montana Lawmakers Supported the Rule Changes

While the clock was still ticking on Montana’s new cannabis law to take effect, lawmakers in the state were calling timeout.

Montana Public Radio reported that the state Department of Revenue “must send rules for the new industry to the Montana Secretary of State’s office” early this week, as it is the department’s “job to carry out that policy through rulemaking, but Republicans and Democrats on the Economic Affairs Interim Committee agree those rules need amending.”

Legislators there said “they want to take some more time to go through the rules that will govern those sales” that are scheduled to begin on New Year’s Day, according to local television station KTVH, as members of the Economic Affairs Interim Committee “voted to informally object to the current rule proposals from the Montana Department of Revenue.” That move would have intended to “delay the rulemaking process for a few days while lawmakers talk with the department and take a closer look at the proposals,” KTVH reported.

Lawmakers last week expressed concerns that some of the department’s proposals fell short. KTVH reported that Republican state Sen. Jason Ellsworth that he has concerns “about some of the provisions that he believes stray too far from what lawmakers intended with HB 701,” including “rules that would allow outdoor marijuana growers – otherwise prohibited but grandfathered in if they were already operating – to increase their cultivation space,” as well as a “a changed rule that would let marijuana dispensaries label their products with the word ‘cannabis’ instead of ‘marijuana.’”

“Since this is such an important issue for the state of Montana, it’s our obligation to make sure it’s 100% accurate, 100% within the intent of the Legislature – that our legislative intent is met for the people of Montana,” Ellsworth told the station “That is our job, and our job alone.”

The post Five Rules Approved to Expand Montana’s Cannabis Industry appeared first on High Times.

The post Five Rules Approved to Expand Montana’s Cannabis Industry appeared first on Paradise Found.