With the huge amount of money being made via state weed taxes, the question that will be persistently asked is where it’s all getting funneled.
A couple news stories have just come out that helps answer this question.
For starters, California has announced a $6 million grant that would help farmers with restoration and environmental-cleanup.
A few weed farms in California were recently fined thousands of dollars for run-off into streams, so this couldn’t come at a better time. The grant, titled the Cannabis Restoration Grant Program will not go directly to cultivators, but to government agencies, nonprofits, or Native American tribes that would be working with the cultivators.
The program is “a great opportunity to assist our local small cannabis farms in overcoming the financial barriers that many face on the road to compliance,” says Peggy Murphy, an economic development specialist in Humboldt County.
In Denver, an initiative will be added to the November elections that would add 1.5% more tax on marijuana that would fund research in preventing the spread of “pandemic pathogens, including at schools, businesses, and hospitals,” as well as “pandemic preparedness and recovery, including urban, economic, and school planning.”
This is in addition to another tax on the ballot that would raise funds in order to the reduce the education gap for low-income students.
So, Denver’s marijuana tax rate could potentially be rising a noticeable amount within the coming year.
Considering the relative newness of marijuana taxation, its functionality is in a stage of trial-and-error. We should welcome any fine tuning of the process, as long as the funds are going towards deepening our values.
