Oregon collected $25.5 million in tax payments from the recreational marijuana industry in the second quarter, the Associated Press reports. Medical marijuana dispensaries are currently selling the drug with a 25 percent tax as the Liquor Control Board finalizes rules for recreational infrastructure.
The state’s Legislative Revenue Office recently quadrupled the expected revenues from the industry through June 2017 from $8.4 million to $35 million. The jump is partly due to the popularity of edibles, which Mazen Malik, a senior economist with the office, said was hard to predict due to the difficulty in measuring the informal market for them.
“We know some people would embrace them because they don’t like smoking, for example, so it would be an easier thing to go to,” he said in an Oregonian report. “Others would just want to try them because they are new and different and they want to see how they work.”
According to the Oregonian report, an estimated $102 million in recreational cannabis has been sold since Jan. 1. State economists predict the state will collect $44.4 million in marijuana taxes this year.
Last week, the LCB said they were processing more than 1,300 applications for recreational marijuana businesses in preparation for the official roll-out of the formal recreational market by the end of the year.
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