The Northwest Chronicle
19
House Bill 2347 would have reduced the excise tax on marijuana sales from 37 to 25 percent, in an effort to help make prices more competitive with their black-market counterparts, said the bill’s primary sponsor Rep. Christopher Hurst, D-Enumclaw. Hurst and proponents of the bill say a reduced tax would be one of the most important ways of eliminating the black-market sales of marijuana, which Hurst said still makes up 65 to 75 percent of sales in the state. “We can’t get there if we price ourselves so much higher than the illicit market,” he said. “The criminals love the tax rate being high, because they don’t pay it, and it makes it so the legal people can’t compete with them.” His proposal failed to pass the House Finance Committee by the Legislature’s cutoff point in February. It was reintroduced in the Special Session, but the present taxes were retained. Hurst said the current tax on pot is too high, and punishes licensed retailers who are playing by the rules of Initiative 502, which voters approved in 2012 to allow the production, sale and recreational use of marijuana by adults in Washington. “The voters, when they passed 502, didn’t say that they wanted more people smoking marijuana or people to smoke more marijuana,” Hurst said. “What they said was they wanted a stabilized, Continued on Page 24
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