Connecticut’s Office of Fiscal Analysis is projecting the state’s cannabis industry will generate $20.4 million in tax revenue in its first full year of operation, and over $55 million in its fourth year.
Department of Consumer Protection Commissioner Michelle Seagull, who will serve as the primary regulator of the adult-use cannabis industry, has predicted Connecticut’s retail cannabis market will go online by the end of the 2022 calendar year.
Researchers in the office predict the industry will generate $3.1 million in the 2022 fiscal year — which runs from July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022 — when the market will still be strictly medical. In Fiscal 2022, OFA predicts that number will jump to $20.4 million. By the 2026 fiscal year, OFA predicts Connecticut will collect $55.2 million in taxes from the legal cannabis industry.
Massachusetts, which started retail adult-use cannabis sales at the end of 2018, collected more than $51 million in taxes from the cannabis industry in fiscal 2020, according to the nonprofit Tax Foundation. Oregon — whose 2019 population of 4.2 million is closer to Connecticut’s 3.5 million — collected more than $133 million in taxes from the industry in fiscal 2022.
Connecticut regulators and others face a monumental task getting the recreational marijuana industry up and running after lawmakers passed a 300-page bill legalizing the drug.
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