Since the sale of adult-use cannabis began back on August 6, Ohioans have spent roughly $10 million per week on the product. According to the Department of Commerce Division of Cannabis Control, as of Nov. 30, adult-use sales have topped $191 million.
The team at Cresco Labs, a marijuana growing facility in Yellow Springs, Ohio, said it has been preparing for a spike in demand since before Issue 2 passed in November 2023.
“There’s been a lot of dramatic changes going on at this site,” Cresco Labs Facility Manager Joe Chek said. “There was construction happening every single day. We had new people every single Monday. We were ramping up as fast as we could.”
When ABC6 first visited Cresco Labs in December 2023, Chek showed us an empty greenhouse that he said would be ready for use once there was more demand.
That space is now completely filled with marijuana plants.
“In this room alone, we have been able to add 1,700 plants,” Chek said. “What that turns out to be is about 400,000 dry grams of product.”
Chek said they’ve nearly doubled their staff at the Yellow Springs facility and have been able to invest in new infrastructure and tools that allow them to generate more products.
“We’ve added new LEDs which allow us to control the specific spectrum of light plants are exposed to and mimic the different seasons of the year so a plant knows when it’s supposed to grow a bud,” Chek said. “Prior to this, you might get 900 or 1,000 grams of product from a plant, but that has increased to 15-20% so far. Long story short, we can get more product off of a single plant just by changing the light they are exposed to.”
While Chek could not provide specifics on revenue at the growing facility, he did say they are sending out much more product than before the sale of recreational marijuana began.
“We are probably creating somewhere between 5,000 to 10,000 finished good units a day,” Chek said. “Overall, we are going through about three times as much as we were before adult-use taking effect.”
Non-medical cannabis sales are subject to state and local sales tax. In addition, the initiated statute includes a 10% excise tax on non-medical marijuana purchases.
According to a report from the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, the social equity provisions within the statute were designed to address past harm of marijuana criminalization by investing in disproportionately impacted communities and encouraging participation of such groups in the new legal cannabis industry.
- 25% to the Substance Abuse and Addiction Fund: Supports substance abuse and addiction services.
- 3% to the Division of Cannabis Control and Tax Commissioner Fund: Supports the operations of the Division of Cannabis Control and covers the tax administration costs.
- 36% to the Host Community Cannabis Fund: Benefits municipal corporations or townships with adult-use dispensaries.
Here’s the catch: That money can’t be used until the upcoming FY 2026-2027.
Why? Issue 2 was passed last year after the enactment of the current state budget, and the initiated statute did not include appropriation line items for agencies to begin spending the money this state fiscal year.
“We expect the appropriations to begin disbursing the marijuana tax revenues will be included in the upcoming FY 2026-2027 biennial budget bill,” said Pete LuPiba, a spokesperson for Ohio’s Office of Business Management.
Municipalities that choose to allow the sale of recreational marijuana within their jurisdictions will have to wait to reap the rewards from that tax revenue.
“We don’t know exactly when we’ll get it, and we don’t know how watered down the amount is going to be by the time he gets to us,” Newark City Council member Doug Marmie said.
Marmie said those unknowns make it difficult to plan what the city will use the revenue for.
“We will utilize it and prioritize it just like we do all of our revenue,” Marmie said. “We always look at safety first. For our citizens, that is our number one priority. Then infrastructure is our number two.”
Marmie said plans for how that tax revenue money could be used has not been discussed among Newark City leaders yet.
Marmie said something the city needs now may not be something the city needs in 2026 and 2027 when those funds are expected to be distributed.
“Things could change,” Marmie said. “We don’t know what growth Intel and everything else is going to bring upon us. With growth comes the need for a bigger focus on safety. Anytime you increase population, that really takes a burden on safety forces, and we have to increase those. But this is something that is going to add to our revenue source, and we are happy about that.”
While Ohio municipalities deal with some unknowns, growing facilities like Cresco Labs are still standing by for final regulations from the state so they can better project future market demand.
“The state is working hard on that, and we understand that,” Chek said. “Once we understand what those final regs (regulations) look like, we will be able to tailor what our operation looks like in order to meet a demand in a market that is set up for longevity. Right now, we just don’t know, so we are waiting patiently to find out what those final regulations look like, and we will go from there.”
Chek said that while the growing facility in Yellow Springs just went through a significant expansion, it could create a bigger footprint if the market demanded it.
“There is no question, we want to make sure that we right-size our operation for what demand looks like, but we have the capability to expand our footprint here,” Chek said. “There are plans for that. It’s just a matter of waiting for the right time to execute.”
This story was published by MSN