States which have legalized marijuana for grownup use collectively generated greater than $3.7 billion in tax income from leisure hashish gross sales in 2021, a report from the Marijuana Coverage Undertaking (MPP) that was launched on Wednesday discovered.
That’s a 34 % enhance in comparison with income that states acquired from hashish gross sales in 2020.
The report follows up on an evaluation MPP put out in January that appeared on the whole adult-use hashish tax income collected by all authorized states since leisure gross sales began in Colorado and Washington State in 2014. On the time, the 2021 figures have been incomplete however nonetheless confirmed that states acquired greater than $10 billion in tax {dollars} from leisure marijuana gross sales over the previous seven years.
Now that the information is up to date for 2021, the group says the 2014-2022 whole as of March is $11.2 billion.
Toi Hutchinson, president and CEO of MPP, mentioned that the report supplies “additional proof that ending hashish prohibition gives great monetary advantages for state governments.”
“The legalization and regulation of hashish for adults has generated billions of {dollars} in tax income, funded essential providers and packages on the state degree and created hundreds of jobs throughout the nation,” she mentioned in a press release. “In the meantime, the states that lag behind proceed to waste authorities sources on implementing archaic hashish legal guidelines that hurt far too many Individuals.”
MPP’s whole doesn’t embody medical hashish tax income, utility and licensing charges paid by marijuana companies, earnings taxes generated by hashish trade staff or company taxes paid to the federal authorities—which means that legalization’s general influence on authorities coffers is even bigger than the billions in leisure gross sales tax income that’s reported.
Right here’s a breakdown of the 2021 leisure marijuana tax income for every adult-use state:
• Alaska: $28,900,231
• Arizona: $153,824,757
• California: $1,294,632,799
• Colorado: $396,157,005
• Illinois: $424,206,703
• Maine: $12,362,622
• Massachusetts: $227,474,842
• Michigan: $209,912,278
• Nevada: $159,885,501
• Oregon: $177,773,944
• Washington: $630,863,570
And listed below are the year-by-year figures for all adult-use state hashish gross sales tax income mixed:
• 2014: $68,503,980
• 2015: $264,211,871
• 2016: $530,521,110
• 2017: $723,145,481
• 2018: $1,275,483,830
• 2019: $1,707,204,090
• 2020: $2,766,027,570
• 2021: $3,715,994,252
Legalizing hashish for adults has been a smart funding. In 2021 alone, legalization states generated greater than $3.7 billion in hashish tax income from adult-use gross sales. https://t.co/PIBn6kwVtg
— Marijuana Coverage Undertaking (@MarijuanaPolicy) April 6, 2022
The report additionally describes completely different ways in which states are distributing hashish income for numerous packages and initiatives, together with neighborhood reinvestments that should assist these most impacted by criminalization.
In a more moderen allocation, Michigan officers introduced final month that they are going to be distributing practically $150 million in marijuana tax income, divided between localities, public colleges and a transportation fund.
Massachusetts is accumulating extra tax income from marijuana than alcohol, state knowledge launched in January reveals. As of December 2021, the state took in $51.3 million from alcohol taxes and $74.2 million from hashish on the midway level of the fiscal yr.
Illinois additionally noticed hashish taxes beat out booze for the primary time final yr, with the state accumulating about $100 million extra from adult-use marijuana than alcohol throughout 2021. And new knowledge reveals that Illinois’s adult-use market noticed its second highest month of hashish gross sales in March, reaching $131 million.
That state is dedicating parts of tax income to psychological well being providers, in addition to native organizations “growing packages that profit deprived communities.” In July, state officers put $3.5 million in cannabis-generated funds towards efforts to scale back violence by means of road intervention packages.
California officers introduced in June that they have been awarding about $29 million in grants funded by marijuana tax income to 58 nonprofit organizations, with the intent of righting the wrongs of the struggle on medicine. The state collected about $817 million in adult-use marijuana tax income in the course of the 2020-2021 fiscal yr, state officers estimated final summer time. That’s 55 % extra hashish earnings for state coffers than was generated within the prior fiscal yr.
In Colorado, practically $500 million of hashish tax income has supported the state’s public faculty system. That state introduced in a report $423 million in marijuana tax {dollars} final yr.