Our top story this week is the first anniversary of the state of Washington’s legal sales of recreational marijuana. The state collected $70 million in tax receipts from $257 million in sales during the first year following the state’s legalization of recreational marijuana. One marijuana business consultant believes that tax collections will increase over the next year or two, and that a cut in the excise tax would help increase the amount collected.

Here is a rundown on other stories related to marijuana that made news this week.

Ninth Circuit: Legal or Not, Marijuana Facility Cannot Deduct Its Expenses

Legalized medicinal marijuana is yesterday’s news; legal recreational marijuana is the way of the world now, and with each passing year, additional states are considering the legalize-and-tax regime first instituted by Colorado and Washington. While state law is becoming more and more accepting of the idea of free-market marijuana, however, a decades-old provision of the federal tax code remains firmly in place, threatening to administer a painful amount of tax on marijuana facilities, and serving as a greater barrier to entry into the industry than any outdated notion of moral or ethical impropriety.

The IRS has been wielding a little known Code section — Section 280E, to be exact — to wage war on medicinal and recreational marijuana facilities. Section 280E provides that no deduction — other than the cost to purchase or grow the marijuana inventory, or Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) — shall be allowed for any amount incurred in a business that consists of “trafficking in controlled substances.

Read more at Forbes.

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Marijuana Study Counters “Gateway” Theory

Marijuana may not be the “gateway drug” some believe it to be, a new study contends.

Instead, teens smoke pot for very specific reasons, and it is those reasons that appear to prompt their decision to try other drugs, researchers report

For example, kids who use marijuana because they are bored are more likely to also use cocaine, while kids using pot to achieve insight or understanding are more likely to try magic mushrooms, according to findings published recently in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse.

Read more at WebMD.
Florida Farmers Await Word on Growing Medical Marijuana

The court battles are over and Florida is now taking the next steps to grow and distribute a form of medical marijuana. Farmers across the state are waiting to see if they’ll be selected to grow the plant.

Growers said it will take about a year to grow and cultivate medical marijuana plants.

Hackney Nursery owner George Hackney has never grown marijuana. That could change soon for his Gadsden County farm.

Hackney is one of 28 applicants that applied to grow a low-THC medical marijuana strain known as Charlotte’s Web. Experts said it’s effective in helping seizure patients. …

The Department of Health will only be granting five licenses to growers.

Read more at News4Jax.

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Texas Border Town Tires of Drug War, Pushes for Marijuana Legalization

Of all the weekends for Colt DeMorris to be pulled over by the cops for a broken tail-light, it had to be the one before 4/20.

That day is the unofficial annual holiday for marijuana enthusiasts, and DeMorris is the executive director of the El Paso chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). He was headed home at 2.30am on Saturday from 420 Fest, a music event sponsored by his group. The smell was unmistakable.

What happened next was predictable: the arrest, the 14-hour booking process, the court date. What is more surprising is that amid the usual torrent of anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-equality measures floated in this year’s session of the Texas legislature, there were 11 progressive marijuana-related bills, and one, legalising marijuana extracts for severe epilepsy, even became law.

Read more at MintPress News.

Montana Ballot Proposal Would Legalize Recreational Pot

A Montana man proposed a ballot measure this week to legalize recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older in Montana.

Anthony Varriano submitted proposed language that would amend the state constitution to regulate pot and tax it as an industry as well as allow the purchase and possession of limited amounts. It would also require that the first $40 million in revenue raised annually in taxes go toward public schools.

Varriano, a 29-year-old reporter for the Glendive Ranger-Review, said the measure is based on Colorado’s recreational marijuana law passed by voters in 2012.

Read more at the Billings Gazette.

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People Substitute Alcohol for Marijuana at Age 21, Study Says

Alcohol seems to act as a substitute for marijuana when people hit the minimum legal drinking age, a recent study found.

The study, published in the Journal of Health Economics, found — perhaps not surprisingly — that alcohol consumption spikes among people just over the age of 21. But it also found that marijuana use experienced a substantial drop at the same age.

The finding is important to the debate about public policy to regulate the substances. As economic substitutes, how strictly marijuana laws are enforced would affect alcohol use — and vice versa — because people will tend to use whichever substance is cheapest or more available.

Read more at the Washington Post.

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