Massachusetts marijuana retailers offered a document $158.7 million price of authorized hashish merchandise in December, based on figures launched by the state’s Hashish Management Fee—bringing the state’s whole recorded gross sales for 2023 to almost $1.8 billion.
Of that annual whole, the majority—greater than 87 %—was from adult-use gross sales, which got here to almost $1.57 billion final yr. Medical marijuana gross sales, in the meantime, totaled about $226 million in 2023.
Report gross sales to adults final month, at $140.0 million, had been largely answerable for the general month-to-month document in December. Gross sales of medical marijuana had been additionally stronger than in latest months, at about $18.6 million, however that market has been typically flat or declining over the previous yr, hovering between $17 million and $20 million every month.
As of the top of 2023, adult-use retailers had seen greater than $5.54 billion in whole gross sales since opening in late 2018. Cumulative medical marijuana receipts over the identical interval whole $1.20 billion.
Basically, the data present, medical marijuana gross sales have slowed because the launch of authorized gross sales to adults, starting to say no lately. The pattern has been seen in different states, too, as extra eligible sufferers choose to as a substitute receive hashish by means of adult-use retailers or develop at dwelling.
In the meantime, adult-use gross sales had a powerful yr, which helped the state set a string of month-to-month data in mid-2023 earlier than reaching one other excessive level to spherical out 2023.
Medical marijuana will not be topic to state tax, however adult-use merchandise incur a ten.75 % excise tax along with the state’s 6.25 % gross sales tax. Municipalities can add as much as one other 3 % tax on prime of these.
State knowledge confirmed for the primary time in 2022 that the state is producing extra tax income from marijuana than alcohol.
In the meantime within the Bay State, lawmakers are contemplating adjustments to legal guidelines round psychedelics.
Earlier this month, officers licensed that activists had submitted sufficient legitimate signatures to power legislative consideration of a psychedelics legalization initiative earlier than the measure probably heads to the state’s 2024 poll. As such, the proposal was formally transmitted to the legislature.
The measure would create a regulatory framework for lawful and supervised entry to psychedelics at licensed amenities. It could additionally legalize the possession and gifting of psychedelics resembling psilocybin and ayahuasca, however it could not in any other case present for business retail gross sales of the substances.
The legislature will now have the selection to enact the reform, suggest a substitute or decline to behave. If lawmakers determine to not legalize psychedelics by Could 1, activists would then have till July 3 to submit not less than 12,429 extra legitimate signatures to place the proposal earlier than voters on the November 2024 poll.
In the meantime, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) lately launched laws that features provisions to create a psychedelics working group to check and make suggestions concerning the potential therapeutic advantages of gear like psilocybin and MDMA for navy veterans.
On the native stage, the psychedelics reform group Bay Staters for Pure Drugs has helped enact native insurance policies to deprioritize enforcement of legal guidelines in opposition to psychedelics in six cities: Salem, Somerville, Cambridge, Easthampton, Northampton, Amherst and Provincetown.
Individually, within the Massachusetts legislature, a Republican lawmaker filed three psychedelics reform payments in April, together with proposals to legalize substances like psilocybin and reschedule MDMA pending federal approval whereas setting a worth cap on therapeutic entry.
There are a number of different items of psychedelics laws which were launched in Massachusetts for the session by different legislators, together with separate measures to legalize sure entheogenic substances for adults.
One other invoice would authorize the Division of Public Well being to conduct a complete research into the potential therapeutic results of artificial psychedelics like MDMA.
Rep. Mike Connolly (D) additionally filed a invoice in 2021 that acquired a Joint Judiciary Committee listening to on learning the implications of legalizing entheogenic substances like psilocybin and ayahuasca.