Recreational cannabis in Montana raises $ 1.5 million

The opening weekend of recreational cannabis sales in Big Sky Country brought big profits.

That comes from the Montana Treasury, which said cannabis sales grossed more than $ 1.5 million last weekend, the first days the state’s legal cannabis market opened for business.

According to the Helena Independent Record, the Governor’s Office of Budget and Program Planning projected revenue of $ 130 million for recreational activities in 2022, rising to $ 195.5 million in 2023 once the moratorium on new businesses ends .

The state levies a 20 percent sales tax on recreational cannabis. (By comparison, medical marijuana is taxed at just four percent in Montana.)

Kristan Barbour, an administrator for the Revenue Department’s Cannabis Control Division, told the Independent Record that “the adult use program went live without any problems with the department’s supported IT systems.”

“We were able to successfully verify with (the) industry that our licensing and seed-to-sales systems worked on Friday to ensure a successful start on Saturday, January 1st, 2022. The successful start was the result of hard work and planning by the employees. in the past six months to meet the challenges of implementing HB 701, ”Barbour said in a statement to the newspaper.

HB 701 was the bill passed by Montana lawmakers and enacted last year by Governor Greg Gianforte after voters in the state approved an electoral initiative in 2020 that legalized the recreational use of cannabis for adults aged 21 and over.

Montana was one of four states where voters approved legalization proposals when they voted in 2020, joining Arizona, South Dakota, and New Jersey.

HB 701 has created a framework for the new marijuana marketplace and also set up what is known as the HEART Fund, which will use the proceeds from the Recreational Pot program to fund drug abuse treatment.

“I knew from the start that we had to find more resources to fight the drug epidemic that is devastating our communities,” Gianforte said at the time. “The HEART Fund funds a full continuum of addiction prevention and treatment programs for communities and will provide new support to coal and steel workers who want to get clean, sober and healthy.”

Sales began on New Years Day, and local TV station KTVH reported that “an estimated 380 pharmacies in 29 counties can now sell marijuana to both medical and recreational customers”.

Regulators in Montana were working to develop rules for the new marijuana program through late 2021 and didn’t issue a list of proposals until October. Barbour said at the time the aim of the proposals was “to be really business-friendly and to try to work with the industry in a way that the rules can be adapted to their current business structure and they can easily evolve.” a lot of pain. “

Last month, members of the state’s Interim Economic Committee approved a list of proposals.

Montana took the plunge

When recreational pots began selling in Montana on Saturday, there were eager customers waiting to make history (and maybe some weed to ease their New Years hangover).

The Independent Record reported that “some pharmacies in Helena queued people to avoid cold temperatures, while others saw a small but steady stream of pedestrians by noon”.

Medical cannabis has been legal in Montana since 2004. JD “Pepper” Petersen, the owner of the Cannabis Corner pharmacy in Helena and a leading proponent of the 2020 legalization campaign, told the Independent Record that 99 percent of customers who came to his store on Saturday were for recreational weed, not medicinal .