Скачать или смотреть $400K difference in budget vis-a-vis revenue spelled doom for Cannabis Commission

The CNMI Cannabis Commission collected just $113,880 in cannabis excise and surtax revenues in fiscal year 2025—a steep drop from prior years and far short of its $517,868 budget appropriation, according to its new Citizen-Centric Report.

The widening gap between earnings and operational costs became one of the primary reasons Gov. David M. Apatang’s administration moved to dissolve the standalone agency and merge it into the Department of Commerce, a consolidation officials say is meant to curb expenses and stabilize a regulatory program no longer generating sufficient income to sustain itself.

Under the report, published last Sept. 3, interim managing director Thomas L. Songsong acknowledged that the commission entered FY2025 already facing fiscal and staffing constraints, yet continued pushing regulatory reforms, industry oversight, and interagency coordination.

But the financial data in the same report underscores the commission’s structural problem, as even at its peak, cannabis revenues have never matched appropriations, and FY2025 saw the sharpest mismatch yet.
Collections totaled $686,978 in FY2024, $458,819 in FY2023, and $170,662 in FY2022, with FY2025 tracking far lower heading into the fiscal year’s close.

The commission’s budget appropriations, however, consistently exceeded these revenue levels—reaching $620,604 in FY2023 and nearly $518,000 in FY2025.

This imbalance essentially made the commission’s long-term sustainability questionable and fueled the policy decision to fold its duties into the Department of Commerce, which already houses multiple regulatory divisions and is better staffed to absorb administrative and enforcement responsibilities.

Read the complete report on our website.