SEATTLE — A year into the nation’s experiment with legal, taxed marijuana sales, Washington and Colorado find themselves wrestling not with the federal interference many feared, but with competition from medical marijuana or even outright black market sales.

In Washington, the black market has exploded since voters legalized marijuana in 2012, with scores of legally dubious medical dispensaries opening and some pot delivery services brazenly advertising that they sell outside the legal system.

Additional Photos

Cannabis City clerk John Golby, left, helps customers looking over a display of marijuana products at the shop in Seattle. The Associated Press

LESSONS IN LEGALIZATION

LESSON ONE: DON’T BE TIMID

Both Colorado and Washington spent many months coming up with rules for how the drug should be grown, sold and consumed. The delays led to one of the biggest disappointments of the marijuana markets – lower-than-hoped tax collections.

LESSON TWO: DON’T GET TOO EXCITED, EITHER

Both Colorado and Washington have seen tax collections fall below some rosy projections. The effective tax rates are about 44 percent in Washington and 29 percent in Colorado, with plenty of asterisks and local variances.

LESSON THREE: THINK OUTSIDE THE BONG

Colorado and Washington weren’t entirely prepared to deal with popular new forms of edible and concentrated weed. It took more than 18 months for Washington to begin sales of edible pot. Colorado has gone back after the fact to tighten rules on edible pot packaging and dosing.

LESSON FOUR: THINK ABOUT THE KIDS

School districts in both Colorado and Washington have reported more kids showing up at school with weed. The experience so far in both states underscores the need for states to have plans for talking with minors about pot.

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Licensed shops say taxes are so onerous that they can’t compete.

Colorado, which launched legal pot sales on New Year’s Day 2014, is facing a lawsuit from Nebraska and Oklahoma alleging that they’re being overrun with pot from the state.

Officials in both states say they must do more to drive customers into the recreational stores. They’re looking at reining in their medical systems and fixing the big tax differential between medical and recreational weed without harming patients.

And in some cases, they are considering cracking down on the proliferating black market.

“How can you have two parallel systems, one that’s regulated, paying taxes, playing by the rules, and the other that’s not doing any of those things?” said Rick Garza of the Washington Liquor Control Board, which oversees recreational pot.

The difficulty of reconciling medical marijuana with taxed recreational pot offers a cautionary tale for states that might join Washington and Colorado in regulating the adult use of the drug.

Lawmakers in Maine have considered a variety of marijuana legalization bills over the past few years and two competing ballot questions seek to legalize the drug in the 2016 election.

The cities of Portland and South Portland have already legalized marijuana, though the votes are little more than symbolic.

While legalization campaigns have focused on the myriad ills of prohibition, including racial discrepancies in who gets busted for weed, the promise of additional tax revenues in tight budget times was in no small part of the appeal.

Weed sales have so far brought in some revenue, though less than officials might have hoped.

Colorado brought in more than $60 million in taxes, licenses and fees for recreational and medical marijuana combined through October of this year, and more than half of pot sold was of the lesser-taxed medical variety.

In Washington, where supply problems and slow licensing hampered the industry after sales began in July, the state collected about $15 million in taxes this year.

The latest states to legalize marijuana – Oregon and Alaska – have different concerns, but officials there are nevertheless paying attention to Colorado and Washington as they work on rules for their own industry.

Alaska doesn’t have commercial medical dispensaries, so licensed stores there won’t face direct competition. And in Oregon, taxes on recreational pot are set at just $35 an ounce, which officials hope will minimize competition from the medical side.

In Seattle, however, six licensed recreational stores face competition from medical pot shops that are believed to number in the hundreds.

“Am I afraid about medical marijuana dispensaries taking my business? They have all the business. They are the industry,” said James Lathrop, the owner of Seattle’s first licensed pot shop, Cannabis City.

He said the dominance of medical marijuana and the black market is obvious in his clientele: It’s mostly tourists and professionals who use pot occasionally and don’t mind spending a little extra at a legal store.

Regular pot users have stuck with their old dealers or continue masquerading as patients, he said.

Reining in medical marijuana will be a top priority when the legislative session begins in Olympia next month.

Ideas under discussion include reducing pot taxes to make recreational stores more competitive and eliminating medical dispensaries, which have been largely tolerated by law enforcement even though they aren’t allowed under state law.

Officials have less leeway to alter the medical marijuana system in Colorado, where it was enshrined in the state constitution in 2000. But lawmakers are nevertheless set to review how it is regulated next year because the state’s 2010 scheme is expiring.

Taxes will be a large part of the discussion. Medical pot is now subject only to the statewide 2.9 percent sales tax, one-tenth of the taxes levied on recreational pot.

Colorado’s medical marijuana registry has grown from 107,000 people in late 2012 to about 116,000 this year, though marijuana patient advocates dispute that the growth is tax-driven.

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