In California, medical marijuana is taxed differently than recreational: if you have a prescription you pay 15% tax, instead of 23-38% tax. The variation in rec

In California, medical marijuana is taxed differently than recreational: if you have a prescription you pay 15% tax, instead of 23-38% tax. The variation in recreational taxes is based on municipality; medical tax is a flat 15% everywhere. The tax is probably still too high, but it's better than not distinguishing between the two. I suppose if the variation was large enough people might go back to paying sketchy doctors to prescribe them weed for "back pain" (which was fairly common in CA when weed was medically legal but not recreationally; the going rate in SF was somewhere around $80 for a host of back-alley doctors to write you prescriptions), but who knows.