LAS VEGAS ( KLAS ) — In Nevada, the first recreational marijuana dispensaries opened in July 2017. The budding business boomed and now there are 698 operational licenses across the state.
However, it hasn’t been the financial windfall the cannabis industry was expecting. Easing the federal restrictions on marijuana by reclassifying it could assist businesses that said the federal tax is too much of a burden to thrive.
“Profit is what you take home. So even though you might generate a lot of revenue, at the end of the day, the profits aren’t there,” Brandon Weigand said.
Weigand is the Chief Operating Officer of Jardin and also the President of the Nevada Cannabis Association.
So is the green rush, the near billion dollar cannabis industry in Nevada, a bust?
“A lot of businesses are either going out of business or just maintaining open doors until hopefully something changes,” Director of the Cannabis Policy Institute, a think tank at UNLV, Riana Durrett said.
Durrett said a spike in sales around the pandemic was expected. So was a natural correction of the market. But taxable revenue was down 12% in Fiscal Year 2023 after a drop in revenue the year prior, which has some concerned.