Montana tops $200 million in first year of recreational pot sales

Montana has raked in more than $200 million in its first year of recreational cannabis sales, the state reported this week.

The Montana Department of Treasury released numbers showing how much money was generated from sales of both medical and recreational marijuana in 2022.

Last year marked the launch of the state’s recreational marijuana market. There, voters legalized medicinal cannabis in 2004.

The Treasury Department said that adult marijuana sales in 2022 totaled $202,947,328, while medicinal cannabis sales totaled $93,616,551.

The two combined totaled $303,563,879 in marijuana sales last year.

According to the Treasury Department, Montana generated $41,989,466 in tax revenue from recreational cannabis sales and $3,744,662 in taxes from medicinal cannabis sales. Collectively, the state collected $45,734,128 in tax revenue from marijuana sales in 2022.

The state imposes a 20% tax on recreational cannabis sales and a 4% tax on medical marijuana.

The Treasury Department said all figures are estimates.

Montana voters approved a 2020 ballot measure to legalize recreational cannabis, one of four states this year where voters passed legalization proposals. The law came into force in 2021.

“Since January, we have been focused on executing the will of Montana voters in a safe, responsible, and properly regulated manner. House Bill 701 achieves that,” Gov. Greg Gianforte said in May 2021, as quoted by local news station KTVH. “From the beginning, I knew we needed to allocate more resources … to fight the drug epidemic that is ravaging our communities.”

Gianforte’s biggest concern about the new law was the creation of the HEART Fund, which subsidizes substance abuse treatment in Montana with proceeds from the sale of recreational marijuana.

“By funding a full continuum of substance abuse prevention and treatment programs for communities, the HEART Fund will bring new support to Montaners who want to get clean, sober and healthy,” Gianforte said after signing the law in 2021. as quoted by KTVH.

As in other states that have ended bans on adult pot use, Montana’s new law includes a component to recover damages incurred from the War on Drugs.

The law “authorizes courts to either convict or delete marijuana offenses that are now considered legal or lesser offenses, but does not enact an automatic deletion procedure,” according to the Montana Free Press, but “the deletion policy has been criticized as cumbersome and unclear.”

In March of last year, the state Supreme Court issued temporary rules designed to help clarify the deletion request process.

The law states that “anyone convicted of a crime that would now be legal in the state may request that their conviction be removed from their record, have their sentence reduced, or have it reclassified as a lesser crime,” it said the Missoula Current.

The biggest clarification from the Montana Supreme Court, Missoula Current says, was to inform individuals that “they may submit their request for deletion to the court in which they were originally convicted.”

After President Joe Biden pardoned anyone with a federal conviction for marijuana possession last October, he encouraged all states to follow his lead.

A spokesman for Gianforte told the Montana Free Press at the time that “the governor will continue to review clemency requests submitted by the Board of Pardons and Parole on a case-by-case basis, in accordance with.” [state] Statute.”