When Proposition 64 was passed in 2016 and legalized recreational marijuana use, many Californians celebrated. But five years later, cannabis business leaders are sounding the alarm on taxes hampering the industry, and experts say illegal marijuana grows ran by drug cartels are popping up across the state.
“These trespass[ing] illegal cannabis growers, a majority of them being from cartel groups out of Mexico, are all over California,” Ret. Spec Ops Lt. John Nores Jr. told The Epoch Times. “The problem was how we regulated.”
Proposition 64 allowed adults 21 and over to purchase and possess marijuana for recreational use. Previously, only medical marijuana was legal, but the illegal trade was flourishing. With the new law came new taxes: one levied on cultivation and the other on retail sales.
Customers pay an 8.5 percent sales tax on recreational marijuana, not medical, while retailers pay a 15 percent excise tax when purchasing from distributors.
As of Jan. 1, the California Tax and Fee Administration raised the cultivation tax by 5 percent to $161 per pound. But a pound no longer sells for $1,200. The price dropped to $300, but the tax remains the same.
Proponents also promised to allocate revenue from the taxes toward youth programs, treatment, enforcement, research, and preventing damage to the environment caused by illegal marijuana operations. Critics of the proposition say those programs didn’t come to fruition on a sustainable level.
Gov….
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When Proposition 64 was passed in 2016 and legalized recreational marijuana use, many Californians celebrated. But five years later, cannabis business leaders are sounding the alarm on taxes hampering the industry, and experts say illegal marijuana grows ran by drug cartels are popping up across the state.
“These trespass[ing] illegal cannabis growers, a majority of them being from cartel groups out of Mexico, are all over California,” Ret. Spec Ops Lt. John Nores Jr. told The Epoch Times. “The problem was how we regulated.”
Proposition 64 allowed adults 21 and over to purchase and possess marijuana for recreational use. Previously, only medical marijuana was legal, but the illegal trade was flourishing. With the new law came new taxes: one levied on cultivation and the other on retail sales.
Customers pay an 8.5 percent sales tax on recreational marijuana, not medical, while retailers pay a 15 percent excise tax when purchasing from distributors.
As of Jan. 1, the California Tax and Fee Administration raised the cultivation tax by 5 percent to $161 per pound. But a pound no longer sells for $1,200. The price dropped to $300, but the tax remains the same.
Proponents also promised to allocate revenue from the taxes toward youth programs, treatment, enforcement, research, and preventing damage to the environment caused by illegal marijuana operations. Critics of the proposition say those programs didn’t come to fruition on a sustainable level.
Gov….
