The taxes and regulations on marijuana are “too high,” according to California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, a Republican endorsed by President Donald Trump.
At an event in Sacramento on Thursday, Marijuana Moment asked Hilton—who is running against former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Sec. Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, in a general election to become California’s next governor—about his cannabis policy position and challenges facing the state’s industry.
The GOP candidate said that after studying the issue and spending “some time with the industry,” he came to understand that there is a “regulatory burden and a tax burden that is too high.”
“The original intent” of legalization was to “bring the industry, as it were, into the open—and you’ve actually seen the illegal industry growing even more since these policies” were implemented, Hilton told Marijuana Moment. “So we’ve got to make a change.”
He said he’s “actually in a conversation in great detail with the industry to look at the specific parts of the regulatory and tax burden that need to be changed in order to achieve the goals of legalization, which is a thriving industry that provides a product safely that people want to consume.”
As he’s
Read full article on Marijuana Moment
