I don’t know if Washington’s State-legal Cannabis market is actually paying for education today, but the numbers are making me suspect that it clearly could be helping our Legislature to more adequately fund our educational system going forward.
Author’s note: the data below may corrupt children. 21+ only, please. (Please don’t call the number below (unless you have or suspect a poisoning, of course) …as it is likely the real number for the poison control people, since it’s a portion of the logo that they propose for edibles. If it is a real phone number you DO NOT want to distract the poison control people from their jobs. When they are dealing with things other than Cannabis, they are often serving a very useful and helpful and crucial function. However – if we were to EDUCATE the poison control people regarding the low levels of toxicity that can rationally and realistically be assigned to Cannabis, then perhaps they would triage Cannabis-related calls more effectively (and efficiently). Hey, I have an idea … what about using some of those educationally-targeted excise tax dollars? If we could train official and quasi-official yet officious bureaucrats away from their pre-existing canna-ignorance, that might represent a very cost-effective fix for many of the man-made problems being faced by this young medical/recreational industry. (Hey, Trey … .wanna develop a curriculum together? …. the course could be called “Learning Cannabis for the Public Good: A course to help Servants be more Civil”)
Back to current reality – The average daily regulated sales (wholesale & retail combined) that occurred in the market in June (before we had zero patients, per the UW and BOTEC) was $2,891,667 (not counting taxes).
Through Monday (July 18th), the market has been averaging $3,042,271 in daily sales (wholesale & retail combined).
Not to be mistaken as holding a position favorable to the existence or conduct of a market that transacts schedule 1 product(s), but GO MARKET GO!!! Go Market Go, indeed.
That is a 5.21% growth in average daily sales over these two periods. That has some implications for forecasting future sales that are interesting.
Simply flatlining the tax that our beloved market is now producing would yield the State an expected $750,000 PER DAY in excise tax revenue (and another $125,000 or so in State sales tax) …. every single day, including Sundays. That’s interesting. It’s also a way-too-small estimate (the kind that the UW CLPP and BOTEC have recently been known for).
I know that $750k per day is only a large drop in the bucket of the money that big energy and big oil and big nicotine and big alcohol and big Government can throw around when feeling threatened or inadequate. It is, however, not chump change today and it is not going to flatline as chump change tomorrow (Trumpiness notwithstanding … it was SOOO good to see Stephen and John back together last night).
See … I can do short(ish)!
My promised PSA (Patient Service Announcement) listing retail access points that have either very high or very low apparent “markups” on the flower they sell will not be posted until I am confident that a fix I’ve been working on to some code I pull data with is complete … should be soon (as of Aug 3 ’16)
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