OLUMBUS, Ohio – In the three months since legal recreational marijuana sales began in Ohio, $15.5 million has been collected for state and local governments from an extra tax on marijuana.
Between Aug. 6 and Saturday, recreational dispensary customers have spent just over $155 million on product, according to the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control. Customers pay 10% taxes on products at the cash register, according to the law voters passed in 2023 legalizing cannabis for adult use. Those collections are on top of existing sales taxes.
According to the statute, the taxes go to several accounts in the state treasury, including:
– 36% to a cannabis social equity and jobs fund, which is to pay for helping people enter the marijuana industry who are from communities that have been negatively affected by the war on drugs. The program is still under development;
-36% to a host community cannabis fund, exclusively for communities where there are adult-use dispensaries;
-25% to a substance abuse and addiction fund to support efforts of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to alleviate substance and opiate abuse, and pay for related research;
-3% to a Division of Cannabis Control and Tax Commissioner fund to support the division’s operations and defray the cost of administering the tax.
The rules are just over a year old, but lawmakers already have considered changing them. When voters approve an initiated statute like the recreational marijuana law, lawmakers can make immediate changes.
Several bills in the General Assembly would change how the tax is distributed including sending money to pay for county jails and law enforcement. The bills haven’t crossed the finish line in the current two-year legislative session, which ends in December.
Ohio House and Senate leaders haven’t mentioned them as priority bills when they’ve ticked off legislation that they’d like to see passed by the end of the year. But anything is possible during the current “lame duck” session of the legislature, which marks this time toward the end of the session when a flurry of bills pass.
Shortly before the initiated statute passed, Ohio State University’s Drug Enforcement and Policy Center looked at tax revenues of other states with legalized recreational marijuana, and estimated during the first full year of cannabis sales in Ohio, revenues could range between $182 million and $218.4 million.
As of Saturday, dispensary customers have purchased 19,548 pounds of flower and 2.5 million units of manufactured product — which can be a vape cartridge, a package of gummies or other products made with marijuana extracts.
