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Listen to this articleQuarterly state revenue from cannabis sales recently increased 52%, representing the largest quarter-over-quarter increase since the drug became legal for recreational adult use in July 2023, according to a report that Comptroller Brooke Lierman’s office released Tuesday.
The market growth resembles what “all states that have legalized adult-use cannabis have experienced,” a spokesperson for the Maryland Cannabis Administration said in a statement.
Cannabis sales contributed about $22.3 million to the state between April and June 2024, compared to $14.7 million in the first quarter of the year, the comptroller’s report states.
“The market for cannabis continues to grow in Maryland and has shown capacity to create new jobs, new investment, and new opportunities, particularly for areas that are marginalized and left behind by a changing economy,” Lierman said in a statement.
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After launching in July 2023, state revenue from cannabis sales increased 20% from the third quarter of 2023 to the year’s final quarter, and then less than 1% from the last quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024.
Maryland imposes a 9% tax on adult-use cannabis sales, and the proceeds are divided among the state’s 24 local jurisdictions, a public health fund, assistance for small, minority- and women-owned businesses entering the industry, the state budget and a fund for investments in communities disproportionately harmed by the decades-long war on drugs.
The community reinvestment and repair fund will receive 35% of the sales and use tax revenue from the last quarter, according to the comptroller’s office.
Audrey Johnson, executive director of an independent executive agency called the Maryland Office of Social Equity that legislators included in their 2023 bill to establish guardrails and tax rates for recreational cannabis businesses and sales, said in a statement that the fund “ensures that communities historically impacted by the prohibition can directly benefit from this new industry.”
For much of the last year, state revenue from cannabis sales was increasing as the median price per gram was falling, according to the Maryland Cannabis Administration’s online data dashboard. Between September 2023 and March 2024, the price per gram dropped about $1.00, from around $10.30 to about $9.30.
The price has since risen and remained stable at $9.60 per gram since early summer.
