As part of an effort to engage the Gardiner, Maine, community and clean up the town of roughly 5,000, a nearby marijuana dispensary is rolling out an innovative new program. Essentially, citizens who bring in a bag of collected trash can exchange it for some weed.

Dennis Meehan, owner of Summit Medical Marijuana, offered the marijuana as a gift to adults over the age of 21. Citizens would meet Meehan at the park and get two trash bags to explore the city and collect any garbage they found.

If residents collected a full bag of trash from around the city they could bring it back and pick up their gifted weed. The exchange rate was one full trash bag for one gram of marijuana. Gifting weed to others became legal in Maine after recreational marijuana was legalized in January. Across municipalities with legalized weed, gifting weed has become a common method to circumvent rules against selling the product on the street.

For more information on the status of legalization in Maine check out our “State of Weed” map here. 

He was inspired to put the event together by a similar weed exchange community event he heard about in Colorado. “[I heard of it in] Colorado – there was a town that did this,” Meehan told the local NBC affiliate. “They had a great response to this. So I was hoping to do the same thing in Maine.”

Meehan advertised the event on the dispensary’s Facebook page. After seeing its success, Meehan hopes to expand the program and make it statewide. While there are certainly some business interests at play here, Meehan also said that he wants to promote the “life-changing” aspects of marijuana, according to the Associated Press.

The nascent marijuana industry has been, so far, considered a success. One important aspect is the massive tax influxes that states that have legalized it have seen. For example, Colorado pulled in $200 million in just tax revenue in 2016, according to MarketWatch. Meehan’s actions prove that there are even more interactive ways for the marijuana industry to engage with the community.

For an industry that faces plenty of criticism, working with local communities could have a huge impact on public perception and how quickly critics shift their views. Now, it’s time to see if other marijuana businesses engage their communities in a similar way to Meehan and his Colorado inspiration.

Josh Schmidt

Josh Schmidt is an editorial intern and is a native of the Washington D.C Metropolitan area. He is working towards a degree in multi-platform journalism with a minor in history at nearby University of Maryland. Contact Josh at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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It’s probably safe to say that the creators of California’s Prop 64 probably didn’t intend to cost the state millions–before earning it billions–with the legalization of recreational marijuana. But that’s exactly what may have happened thanks to a legislative blunder that will give medical marijuana patients a lengthy tax holiday.

Prop 64 was designed to apply a 15 percent excise tax to all recreational and medical marijuana sales starting January 1, 2018. The excise tax would be tacked onto a 7.5 percent sales tax for recreational marijuana, but Prop 64 repealed that tax for medical marijuana.

According to the Washington Post, the tax exemption was intended to give medical marijuana users a tax break beginning in 2018, but the January 1, 2018 target date was regrettably omitted from the 62-page initiative. Therefore, the tax exemption went into effect this week once the initiative passed. The initiative’s creators argued that it wasn’t their intention to grant a 14-month tax holiday to medical marijuana users, but California’s Board of Equalization ruled otherwise.

“The resulting revenue loss for 2017 is estimated to be as much as $49.5 million,” said board member Jerome Horton, citing the total tax revenue collected from 1,632 dispensaries in 2014. “Local cities who anticipate preserving their revenue from medical marijuana may get nothing since Proposition 64 provides for a complete exemption from medical marijuana.”

There are precedents for ignoring legal provisions that clearly contain clerical errors, but the Board didn’t see fit to invoke them. That means the provision is legally binding, despite its financial implications.

This marijuana loophole has many people who were interested in using recreational weed considering medical marijuana cards as a more cost-effective alternative.

David Goldman, a medical marijuana patient and president of the Brownie Mary Democratic Club–the first politically affiliated Cannabis club in California–told the San Francisco Chronicle that he intends to keep using his medical card despite Prop 64 being passed.

“I purposely renewed my registration this month,” said Goldman. “If you spend more than $100 on cannabis in a month, you will probably do better if you get the state card.”

In order to become a medical marijuana patient in California, individuals must first obtain a recommendation from a doctor before applying for a Medical Marijuana Identification Card or MMIC with the California Department of Public Health, which includes a $100 fee.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Oregon’s first week of selling legalized marijuana has been, by pretty much all accounts, a success. The first week of sales topped an estimated $11 million, blowing sales from other states with legalized weed, including Colorado and Washington, out of the water. If those sales keep up, Oregon can expect to see a pretty noticeable bump in new revenue when the sales taxes kick in this January.

Oregon began selling legal marijuana for recreational uses on October 1, after Ballot Measure 91 to legalize it was successful during the 2014 midterm elections. Just over 56 percent of voters voted to legalize marijuana, and the state took almost a year to put in place the necessary regulations and protocols to sell legalized week. However, there are still some aspects of the industry that are being sorted out.

Currently, only adults 21 and older are allowed to purchase marijuana. Only “flower and dry leaf products, plants, and seeds” are being sold and there are restrictions on the amounts of those items that are able to be sold. Other products, like edibles, are still not being sold to recreational users as some regulation kinks are worked out, but are still available to medical marijuana license holders.

Currently, only licensed medical marijuana dispensaries are allowed to sell the products; there are roughly 200 of those in Oregon. There are plans to begin allowing standalone stores dedicated to selling legalized marijuana sometime next year. Additionally, there are some places where legalized marijuana won’t be sold in Oregon, as the state has allowed individual cities and counties to prohibit the sale.

One the first day of sales–October 1–the Oregon Retail Cannabis Association estimated that there was roughly $3.5 million in sales. This is good news for the state, given that it set a tax revenue goal of $9 million for the first fiscal year. Recreational marijuana won’t be taxed in Oregon until January, at 25 percent. The Oregon Retail Cannabis Association is very optimistic about that $9 million goal–it believes that the tax revenue brought in will be three to four times as much.

So far Oregon’s foray into legalized marijuana has been a success, even just a week in. While there are still regulations that need to be figured out, and the addition of taxes in January may slow down some sales, Oregon is on its way to being a great economic example in the argument for legalizing marijuana.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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