I was looking at the tax rates for the legal, retail states.
Washington: 37%
Colorado: 29%
Alaska: 25%
Oregon: 20%
Obviously, Washington could bear going down to 25%. Both Washington and Colorado have enjoyed vastly more tax revenue than they planned.
Now from the states that recently passed retail marijuana laws:
California: 15%
Nevada: 15%
Maine: 10%
Massachusetts: 3.75%
You can bet that the top priority for the government in California is to get that tax rate up there. The Massachusetts initiative is just begging for a real job from the legislature. In Maine, they may have ignored how the taxes act on the regulatory process: the better-funded your regulatory agency is, the quicker it works.
Taxes paid enable the state to legislate and regulate the cannabis business; in exchange the state promises protection from the DEA for those businesses. After that, it really doesn’t matter much where the excess revenue goes.