The United States Census Bureau has created this map to track the proportion of tax revenue in states that is generated by marijuana sales. The sale of the plant for recreational use is legal in 24 states, and while marijuana sales represent a small fraction of a state’s tax take, it nonetheless contributes to the local economy.
The map, which you can find below, takes into account the figures from Q4 of 2023, and it showed that New York recorded an excise of $14.8 million on marijuana sales. This only represents 0.02% of the state’s total tax take for the quarter.
However, this figure represents a big jump, 49%, from the preceding quarter and this is perhaps an indication that the New York marijuana market is gradually starting to emerge. There has been a big increase in stores selling the plant in The Big Apple in the last year, after recreational marijuana use was legalized in the state in March 2021.
If you can’t see the map below, click here.
In Colorado, which was the first state to allow the opening of retail cannabis stores in 2014, marijuana tax accounted for 1.23% of all tax revenue for Q4 2023, standing at $61.0 million. This was a decrease of 9.05% decrease from Q3 2023.
There were huge increases in marijuana tax figures in other states, meanwhile. Connecticut saw a raise of over 150% in their cannabis tax take between Q3 and Q4 2023. Rhode Island and Washington DC also saw growth on a similar scale.
The states with the largest proportion of tax revenues stemming from marijuana sales were Washington State (1.37%), Alaska (1.32%), Colorado (1.23%) and Montana (1.09%).
Conversely, Rhode Island (0.10%), Pennsylvania (0.07%), New York (0.02%), Mississippi (0.01%), and Louisiana (0.01%) were the states whose tax revenues were the least impacted by marijuana sales.
Overall, the revenue gleaned from marijuana sales may seem low, but in some instances, it generates more money for the states than the sale of alcohol. In the last fiscal year, Illinois generated $451.9 million worth of tax from their legalized cannabis sales, which was bigger than the tax collected from alcohol sales, $316.3 million.
In 2022, both Colorado and Washington made more money from marijuana sales than from alcohol and cigarette tax takes.
The Census Bureau defined tax as: “For this dataset, the concept of ‘taxes’ is comprised of all compulsory contributions exacted by a government for public purposes. Tax revenue is further defined to include related penalty and interest receipts of a government but to exclude protested amounts.”
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