Massachusetts Potheads Drop $440K at First 2 Legal Shops on Day 1

Massachusetts on Tuesday became the first state on the East Coast of the United States to sell recreational cannabis legally, and with only two dispensaries open in the commonwealth of neatly seven million people, consumers in the state spent $440,011 purchasing 10,700 individual cannabis items, according to state data cited by the Boston Globe.  Lines were lengthy on Tuesday morning as the shops prepared to open. In Northampton, Mass., the town’s mayor David Narkewicz made history by recording the first purchase of legal marijuana there, selecting an edible item—specifically, a cannabis-infused chocolate bar—which he claimed that he had no plans to actually eat.  “I am actually going to probably preserve it and display it, because it is historically significant,” Narkewicz told reporters.  Massachusetts passed a ballot measure legalizing recreational marijuana in the November 2016 election. More than two years later, stores opened in Northampton and in Leicester, Mass., a city in central Massachusetts about an hour west of Boston. Northampton is located in western Massachusetts about two hours to Boston’s west, and is best-known as the heart of the “Five Colleges” area, with the University of Massachuetts-Amherst, Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College and Hampshire College all in close proximity—perhaps making the town an ideal location for recreational weed sales. Long lines continued on Wednesday at the shop Cultivate in Leicester, according to MassLive.com. Lines at the dispensary New England Treatment Access in Northampton were shorter than on Tuesday, but still numbered in the hundreds of cannabis-craving customers, MassLive reported. In Leicester on Tuesday, MassLive reported, the most popular items were “gummy cubes, containing 5 milligrams of THC each, and the chocolate OG strain.” The pot sales appear to be proving lucrative for Massachusetts state coffers already, with the state levying an additional 10.75 percent excise tax on legal marijuana, on top of the 6.25 percent sales tax Massachusetts already charges consumers on most purchases of anything. The combined 17 percent tax would have netted the state almost $75,000 on Tuesday alone from just two stores, The Glove reported. Marc St. Gil / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain