As medical director for Medical Cannabis of Southern California I evaluate patients for medical marijuana recommendations full time.   I keep reading in the news about California and cities wanting to impose special taxes on the sale of medical marijuana.   Medical Marijuana should be taxed, but not at a higher rate than any other business or industry. This increased tax rate will only be passed on to patients.   Insurance does not cover medical marijuana so the burden is going to fall on patients which is not right.

An increase in the tax imposed on dispensaries will only fuel the black market for medicine where growers are operating under the radar and DO NOT pay sales tax.    I think what cities and the State needs to do is allow current dispensaries to operate FOR PROFIT so that they can show income and revenue.  They need to establish land use ordinances to determine how many they want in the city, allow them to get business licenses and pay taxes like everyone else.   Just treat them fairly!

Imposing a 10% tax rate plus and additional 2.5% like I have been reading about is going to be the nail in the coffin for many dispensaries.   The collective/dispensary business is not the cash cow that people think.   Most do not grow their own medicine and have to pay very high prices to get it from the growers.   Then there is a lot of competition which is keeping prices down.  The people who are going to suffer ultimately are the patients.

I similar example was the California Tax on cigars.   They decided that they were going to increase tax revenue by charging people who smoked cigars extra money.   Do you know what happened??  The local cigar shops got crushed because people now order them online from out of state to save the money.  The local cigar shops and the State of California are making $0.0 dollars on those sales.   Their thinking is counterintuitive and not effective.

Folks, before you get all excited about the increase in revenue your city is going to get you need to figure out what ultimately is going to happen by imposing higher tax rates on medical marijuana.