Gov. Brian Sandoval wants a special tax on recreational marijuana sales to boost his budget, but state lawmakers and industry executives are concerned that his proposal might be too high.

The worry, they say, is that if the taxes on recreational sales balloon too much and prices get too high, some Nevadans might forgo the legal market altogether.

Sandoval announced during Tuesday’s State of the State address that his proposed two-year budget calls for a 10 percent special tax on the retail sales of marijuana, which he expects will generate $70 million to go towards public education.

Cannabis consumers could be paying more Colorado marijuana tax come July 1. As with any proposed tax increase, the prospect has been met with some concern amid the news that one of the state's pot taxes would increase 50 percent.

At issue is a proposal floated this week by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper that would raise the special sales tax on recreational marijuana products to 12 percent on the date it was scheduled to drop to 8 percent from its current 10 percent.

Unaffected would be the 15 percent excise tax on cultivators, the 2.9 percent standard state sales tax and any local sales taxes.

Three years after Uruguay became the first South American country to create a legal market for marijuana, seven out of every ten cannabis consumers still acquire the product on the black market. The delays in the implementation of the legalization law have left the door open for drug trafficking, and it appears that the illegal marijuana trade will remain a lucrative business for at least the near future. 

A cannabis-legalization group is giving away thousands of marijuana joints in protest of the inauguration of Donald Trump.

The D.C. Cannabis Coalition calls the event the #Trump420 demonstration and says they’ll hand out 4,200 joints as they parade from DuPont Circle to the National Mall. The group is for the legalization of marijuana in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia.

On their website, the group plans to light the joints four minutes and twenty seconds into Trump inauguration speech. The group says it will check the identification of everyone requesting marijuana. They also warn participants of the risk for arrest if smoking or carrying marijuana onto Federal property.

More than half of US states—28—have legalized medical marijuana. Sixty percent of Americans support legalization, according to an October 2016 Gallup poll—including 42% of Republicans. Some of these cannabis supporters live in conservative states, and some are even in their state’s legislature, supporting marijuana reform measures.

The results of the 2016 election tell us being a Republican and a marijuana legalization advocate are no longer mutually exclusive, if the labels ever were to begin with.

Eight US states voted on marijuana legalization ballots in the 2016 Election. Five of them — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Montana, and North Dakota — turned red for Trump. Of those five, four states also legalized cannabis in some form, the .

"In each case, with the exception of Arkansas, the cannabis initiatives received almost as many or more votes than Trump garnered," the Marijuana Business Daily's Eli McVey writes.

Sean Gallup/Getty

It’s a well-established trope in the mainstream financial press and even in much of the modern consciousness that Bitcoin is merely the Cayman Islands of currencies. Criminals use it to hide their money (same as they do cash, but with more efficiency) from the government. While Bitcoin is nearly impossible to actually eradicate itself, the fear of government intervention to prevent merchants from using the currency has long pervaded conversations about Bitcoin.

Politically, Virginia has come to be viewed as somewhat "purple," a mixture of southern conservatism and liberalizing suburbs, and weed activists now see it at the tipping point for legal marijuana.

But could it go green? Probably not all at once. 

A key Florida senator Thursday released the Legislature's first attempt at carrying out a constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana, with the proposal calling for a growing number of marijuana licenses and making it easier for doctors to order the treatment for patients.

The bill by Sen. Rob Bradley, who was instrumental in passage of medical-marijuana laws in 2014 and 2016, came days after health officials published proposed regulations to implement the constitutional amendment, which received more than 71 percent approval from voters in November.

Saskatoon residents have a new avenue to clear the air about medical marijuana.

Supplying customers with information, classes and access to doctors open to prescribing medical marijuana, National Access Cannabis (NAC) opened its Saskatoon location in early January.

Promoting and educating people about marijuana as medicine, the business — which has locations across Canada — does not house or sell any marijuana, nor does it encourage people to purchase marijuana from illegal storefront dispensaries.

Instead it encourages clients to purchase medicine from one of Health Canada’s 38 licensed producers.