Reporting on Washington State’s legal marijuana market is slow-going, with data released by the Liquor and Cannabis Board being months behind other states.
Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board, which oversees the state’s legal marijuana industry, operates a neat and fairly comprehensive Marijuana Dashboard which has detailed statistical information regarding marijuana sales, licensing and production. The problem is that the Board seems be incredibly slow at collecting data, and/or reporting it.
The latest monthly sales data for Washington’s marijuana industry was released by the Board roughly two months ago. This was data for October, 2017. This means that data for November, 2017 and onward is unreported and completely unknown by anyone outside of the Board (or maybe it’s even unknown to them). By contrast, in Oregon and Colorado, states which have their Department of Revenues overseeing their marijuana markets, sales and tax data is reported through February of this year. This means that they’re four months ahead of Washington’s available data, and just one month behind current time (this makes March the only finished month where data isn’t yet available, though it will be soon).
The over $140 million in legal cannabis sold in October resulted in nearly $30 million in taxes for the state. So far for fiscal year (FY) 2018, which began on July 1st of this year, there has been $534 million in marijuana sold, resulting in over $120 million in taxes. For FY 2017, which began on July 1st, 2016, and ended on June 30th, 2017, there was $1,371,882,585.79 in legal marijuana sold in Washington State in fiscal year 2017; the state garnered $314,838,969.21 in taxes from these sales.
In total there was $1,371,882,585.79 in legal marijuana sold in Washington State in fiscal year 2017, which began on July 1st, 2016, and ended on June 30th, 2017. The state garnered $314,838,969.21 in taxes from these sales. All of this is according to data released by the 