Alaska’s legal cannabis market earned $750,851.59 from Oct 29., the day the first store opened, to Dec. 9, according to an Alaska Dispatch News report. In November, seven cannabis cultivators paid $81,100 in taxes to the state Department of Revenue – mostly in cash.
Half of the tax revenues will be deposited into the state’s general fund, while the other half will be used for programs aimed at rehabilitating repeat criminal offenders.
Under the law, buds are taxes at $50 per wholesale ounce, while trim – stems and leaves – are taxed at $15 per wholesale ounce. In total, about 98 pounds of bud and 10 pounds of trim were sold in the state during the first full month of recreational sales, the Department of Revenue’s Tax Division Director Ken Alper indicated in the report. The numbers for November’s sales, due in December, are not yet available.
Despite recent supply shortages that have forced intermittent closing of some retail locations, last month three new stores opened in Anchorage and one in Fairbanks. Sitka’s first shop, Weed Dudes, opened on New Year’s Eve.
The first-month sales were generated by two shops in Fairbanks, one in Valdez, one in the Kenai Peninsula, and one in the state capital of Juneau.