Michigan pot shops generated $221,000 in sales Sunday during the state’s first day of legal recreational marijuana purchases, generated by three licensed facilities in Ann Arbor, reports the Detroit News. The total on the first day of legal adult use sales in Michigan doesn’t include the $22,100 paid to the state because of a 10 percent excise tax on adult use products or the $14,586 generated by the 6 percent sales tax. The sales from Michigan’s first licensed adult use retailers came 13 months after voters approved a ballot measure legalizing adult use.
Lines of people from Michigan and other areas of the Midwest formed outside of the Ann Arbor retail shops Sunday to kick off sales that the state projects will total hundreds of millions of dollars in the first year. Total medical marijuana sales from Oct. 1, 2018 through Nov. 22, 2019 were $269.5 million. The state had a year after the adult use law took effect to set up the commercial adult use licensing system and did so weeks ahead of time. The Marijuana Regulatory Agency awarded the first adult use license on Nov. 19. The first licensed adult use retailers are allowed to transfer up to 50 percent of their existing medical marijuana to their adult use inventory to prevent the months-long delay expected if the retailers had to grow adult use product from scratch. As of Wednesday, the state had issued 18 adult use marijuana licenses, including six retail licenses, three processor licenses, six Class C growing licenses and one license each for an event organizer, safety compliance, and secure transporter.