Montana’s final adult-use marijuana rules allow tribes to scale up

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Montana lawmakers approved reworked adult-use marijuana rules, including allowing tribes to increase the size of their cannabis facilities.

According to the Helena Independent Record, when House Bill 701 was passed earlier this year, each tribal government was given a tier 1 license that allowed for 1,000 square feet of indoor cultivation.

But under the revised regulations agreed upon by lawmakers and the Department of Revenue’s Cannabis Control Division (CCD), the top license available to tribes is a tier 12, which allows for 50,000 square feet of canopy.

Under the new rules, outdoor growers must remain at the same size and cannot develop new outdoor facilities.

However, outdoor sites that were in place before the 2020 election have been grandfathered in.

Lawmakers also cut a proposed rule to allow marijuana companies to label products as “cannabis.”

The CCD was leaning toward allowing the word “cannabis” on labels because some companies said marijuana was a pejorative term, the Independent Record reported.

But the agency ultimately decided that children might not recognize “cannabis” and that the word marijuana could help deter them from consuming MJ products.

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Recreational cannabis sales in Montana are slated to begin Jan. 1, 2022.

The 2021 MJBizFactbook projects that first-year adult-use sales in Montana will reach $90 million, with annual sales growing to $325 million by the fourth year of the program.