Michigan is allocating $20 million of its recreational marijuana tax revenue this year toward cannabis-related medical research.
The move to fund research comes after some confusion about marijuana tax disbursements earlier this month, MLive.com reported.
A March 4 announcement about the disbursement of marijuana tax revenue from the Michigan Department of Treasury made no mention of putting the money toward research.
However, Michigan law requires that the treasury department use that revenue to “provide $20 million annually to one or more clinical trials … researching the efficacy of marihuana in treating the medical conditions of United States armed services veterans and preventing veteran suicide.”
Michigan’s cannabis regulator, the Marijuana Regulatory Agency (MRA), previously told MLive.com that the agency was still setting up a dispersal system for the funding.
Now, the MRA has told the news website that the $20 million in research funding has been appropriated and will start being distributed over the current fiscal year, which ends in September.
Adult-use marijuana sales in Michigan approached $440 million in the first full year of the program, which launched in December 2019.