State Liquor tax collections have been about $10 million per month, for the last few years. That's what other media sources are reporting. And the upstart medical marijuana industry is exploding with sales increases every month which eclipse the previous month by over 20% more. The June tax collections of excise & sales tax will be between $4 million & $5 million. By this time next year the number may be double what it is now. When you add the patient licensing and Medical Marijuana Business (MMB) licenses, there is already a huge windfall for the state and municipal governments. And this is for a revenue raising measure which the voters overwhelmingly supported, just 1 year ago. Average patient spending is increasing every month, and new patient licensure may be double the current tallies, by this time next year. We were expected to have around 70,000 patients licensed by next month. But the current number of licensed patients is double, and growing fast. |
Tobacco taxation appears to be a declining source of tax collections. Our research is not complete, but some charts show the tobacco tax dwindling, even as the rates were recently hiked on the remaining consumers of tobacco products. If trends continue, tobacco will wither away as a tax base. In 2014 it brought in $10 million per month, but much of that was locked in the TSET agency for smoking cessation efforts and other social engineering projects. What remains a big question mark is the potential revenue from a broader repeal of prohibition of marijuana? If voters pass another state question to that effect, it may be successful partly because folks are willing to watch cannabis users pay for more of our state govt. operations. |
Rest assured, we've not heard the last on this subject. Barring a social calamity caused by medical cannabis usage (& off-label casual use by patients); There will be more & more voters asking; "What was all the fuss?". And when more patients return to a healthier quality of life, there will be more & more demand that the state remove the cumbersome barriers that we put on this medicine, including the tax on the physician-led treatment for cancer and other deadly disorders. Why is the OTC reporting lower collections?Unlike Liquor & Tobacco, Legal Marijuana commerce is subject to BOTH excise & sales taxes. The Oklahoma Tax Commission does make monthly reports of the 7% excise tax that is directly coded exclusively to medical marijuana sales. But almost all the state has at least 8.5% state & local sales taxes applied to cannabis medicines. So the OTC reports tell less than half the actual taxes generated from the new cannabis industry success. What kind of tax revenue would full repeal of prohibition generate? |
Last year, Colorado took in $266 million in taxes from all legal marijuana (medical and casual). Oklahoma has 70% of the Colorado population base, so full legalization would likely generate about $170 million. Which makes it far more attractive to lawmakers who can't help but grow the size of govt.