When towns agreed last year to open their borders for new recreational cannabis dispensaries, they were promised a windfall of cash.

Money that would be generated through a 2% transfer tax placed on every sale.

Well, now the towns that were first in line for the state's cannabis industry are beginning to reap the benefits.

Mike Davis is a reporter with the Asbury Park Press who crunched the numbers to see just how much and on what that money is being spent.

He joins me now.

Mike, so you did a lot of digging, a lot of analyzing of the data here.

What largely did you find that towns are using this money from the sales of marijuana for?

Well, it kind of varies, Briana.

I think it depends on how big the town is.

You know, a town like Elizabeth you know, is much different than a Bellmawr or Deptford.

You know, I think in some of the smaller towns, it's as easy as looking at the budget and finding out line items and just comparing.

I know in Lawrence Township in Mercer County, their business administrator told me they're basically able to pay for their trash collection next year just off of cannabis alone.

In some municipalities, you know, it might not be that much if you're talking about a $100 million budget, a couple hundred grand isn't really going to do that much.

But I think in a state like New Jersey, where property taxes are at the forefront of everybody's brain, having any little bit of extra revenue to try to keep that down is going to be a huge win for whatever that town might be, whether it's a big town or a small town.

Okay.

So you mentioned a couple of municipalities there.

How much money are we talking?

Because I know you look specifically at the areas where marijuana cannabis dispensaries opened last year, April of 2022.

So not the full amount that we now have operating.

Yeah, that's right.

I mean, just to compare apples to apples, we looked at those towns where dispensaries opened on day one last year.

So April 21st, so it's about 12 dispensaries.

We got numbers for ten of the towns and they range somewhere between $150,000 for 2022.

So over a million.

That's in Bellmawr in Camden County.

There's no rhyme or reason.

So what the revenue looks like at each different town, you know, there's some bigger, bigger municipalities with that fall kind of in the low end of spectrum.

And then you have a small town like Bellmawr that has 15,000 people and they're bringing in over $1,000,000.

I think some of it has to do with location.

You know, if you have a dispensary in your area and there's nothing within a half hour of you, you're more likely to get more customers and more likely to do more sales and more likely to get more tax revenue.

Whereas when you look at some places in North Jersey, specifically like Bergen County, Hudson County, there are so many dispensaries, there's a huge glut of them because that's where the huge population is.

And I think there you see the numbers.

They're still high because just the sheer number of people there, but probably not to the level of impact that you'd see other parts of the state.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So on that note, I'm wondering if these towns are anticipate adding seeing some of these revenue numbers shrink as we see the market expand.

You know, I think in the long term, yeah those numbers are going to go down.

But you got to remember we're at right now there are 35 locations in New Jersey where you can buy recreational cannabis.

That's not nearly enough.

You know, I mean, there is still a huge level of the market that's completely untapped so the numbers are still going to go up, I think, for at least another year or two.

I know the some of the officials I talked to, we're talking about their numbers as much as doubling for 2023.

But you're right.

Once those other municipalities start getting on line and obviously we're still in a position where only about 25% of the state allows dispensaries, the more towns come online, the more of those projects that are in the process of going through the motions right now with licenses.

Once those come online I think yeah eventually, you're going to see more supply the price goes down and the tax revenue goes down.

But I think what municipalities are doing are thinking ahead you know they're the folks that I talked to in these first 12 towns.

They saw an opportunity that yeah.

For a couple of years we're going to be ahead of the game and we're going to get some of that extra revenue.

And if it evens out in the long run, then that's fine.

But at least we were there to get the big boom early on.

Yeah, certainly better than better than collecting nothing.

Reporter Mike Davis, really great work.

Thanks so much for sharing your reporting with us.

Thanks, Briana.