Oregon is marking its first year of legal marijuana and with it some milestones: We are buying a lot of pot and the sales are generating millions in tax revenue -- but not in the eastern half of the state, where the idea remains particularly unpopular.

Other cannabis trends worth noting: Oregon recorded an uptick in marijuana-impaired drivers last year and the Oregon Poison Center fielded more calls from people who felt sick after overindulging.

Last July 1, Oregon became one of a handful of states where anyone 21 and older can possess pot and grow it in their backyard.

The state's official recreational marijuana marketplace, complete with seed-to-sale tracking, won't open until later this year. But the Legislature gave the go-ahead for early recreational pot sales earlier this year, allowing consumers to walk into one of hundreds of existing medical marijuana dispensaries to buy pot, including marijuana-infused edibles and extracts.

Some key takeaways since the landmark law took effect:

Oregonians have embraced the industry, at least with their wallets.

Oregon has collected $14.9 million in tax revenues from the sales of recreational marijuana since January - translating into an estimated $60 million in sales.

Marijuana sales are taxed at 25 percent, though medical marijuana remains untaxed. The revenue has far outpaced state economists' expectations and that doesn't include the recently expanded sales of spendier edibles and concentrates.

The tax on recreational pot eventually will be replaced with one ranging from 17 percent to 20 percent once the Oregon Liquor Control Commission begins regulating recreational marijuana sales later this year.

What's next

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission eventually will oversee marijuana production, processing and sales. But the agency isn't expected to open the market until October. Meanwhile consumers 21 and older can shop for pot at any one of the 362 medical marijuana dispensaries selling to the recreational market.

According to the latest statistics, the liquor commission has received 1,088 applications for the six kinds of licenses the agency is charged with issuing: labs, producer, processor, wholesaler, retailer, researcher.

The agency has received 734 applications for marijuana producer licenses, 123 of them in Jackson County.

The Legislature set the base tax rate at 17 percent, but cities and counties can adopt ordinances that add up to 3 percent more.

In Portland, home to 147 dispensaries selling recreational marijuana, the City Council in June voted unanimously to place a 3 percent pot tax on the Nov. 8 ballot. City officials said the tax could conservatively raise an estimated $3 million to $5 million a year for Portland.

Leafly, a marijuana review site and guide to dispensaries, says recreational cannabis sells for an average of $13.67 a gram in Oregon, compared with $14.68 a gram in Washington.

In June, dispensaries started selling marijuana-infused edibles, extracts and topical products that had until now been available only on the medical marijuana market. The new choices have been an additional boon to sales, shop owners say.

Case Van Dorne and Joel Jennings -- owners of a dispensary on Portland's east side and another near the Beaverton border -- say business is brisk. Their west-side location on bustling Southwest Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway sees 400 to 800 customers on a typical Friday, and the east-side shop sees between 250 and 400.

"Doctors come in in scrubs, lawyers in suits, chefs fresh out of a greasy kitchen - people are stopping by to pick up some weed and going home to watch a movie," Van Dorne said.

Police are finding more drivers under the influence of marijuana.

Between July 1 and Dec. 31 of last year, 50 drivers were accused of driving under the influence of marijuana, compared with 19 for the same time period the previous year, according to the latest Oregon State Police statistics.

Another 93 drivers were accused of having marijuana along with other drugs in their systems at the time they were stopped, compared with 44 the previous year.

Overall, the agency's data shows driving under the influence of any substance rose by 7 percent in 2015.

Sgt. Bob Ray, spokesman for the Washington County Sheriff's Office, said deputies have seen a similar upward trend among drivers, especially those combining alcohol and marijuana. His agency plans eventually to train all 186 deputies in evaluating whether a motorist is under the influence of drugs, including cannabis, he said.

"It's clearly much more than it was before" legalization, Ray said. "I don't know that people realize the effects, especially when you combine marijuana and alcohol, how much more impaired that makes you."

Much remains unknown about the impact of legal marijuana on public health in Oregon.

Public health experts have begun gathering a wide range of data on how much marijuana Oregonians are consuming and in what form now that it's legal to possess, grow and buy.

The latest data, collected in 2014 before recreational sales began, shows 1 in 10 adults in Oregon use marijuana. That rate has exceeded the national average for the past decade.

The state won't get a clear picture of teen marijuana consumption until 2017 when it conducts the next Oregon Healthy Teens Survey, said Julia Dilley, a senior research scientist and epidemiologist who works for Multnomah County.

Among young adults in the county pot use isn't only common but, according to 2013 data, appears to be on the rise. Already, Multnomah County teens use marijuana at rates higher than teens in the rest of Oregon and the country, and they say the drug is easy to get, according to 2014 public health surveys.

Using a federal grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, Oregon and Washington are looking at how local regulation, including bans on pot shops, affects public health.

They're looking at rates of treatment for marijuana dependence and emergency room visits, data that's not yet available.

Oregon Poison Center statistics show the number of calls related to marijuana ingestion has ticked up each year since 2013, when the center received 112 marijuana-related calls. Last year, the agency handled 158.

In the first three months of this year, the center received 86 calls about marijuana, which associate medical director Rob Hendrickson speculated is a "gross underestimation of total statewide harm" since most emergency doctors don't often report mild cases involving adults seeking medical treatment after consuming pot.

The poison center is studying what symptoms people experience when they seek emergency room care after smoking or eating marijuana and at what doses they experience problems, said Hendrickson, a professor of emergency medicine and a medical toxicologist at Oregon Health & Science University.

Dilley said even Colorado hasn't drawn solid conclusions from the public health data that it's collected since legalizing marijuana in 2012.

"Oregon is in the same boat," she said. "Oregon is unique in that the regulated recreational market isn't officially open even though we have retail sales. We are in a bit of a gray period of implementation."

Many communities, especially in eastern Oregon, remain opposed to recreational pot.

According to the latest tally kept by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, more than 100 cities and counties throughout eastern Oregon, have opted out of allowing licensed marijuana businesses.

They are allowed to ban recreational marijuana production and sales under a law passed by the Legislature in 2015. Communities where at least 55 percent opposed Oregon's legalization measure could opt out without referring an ordinance to the voters if they decided before last December. Any city or county, however, can still refer an opt-out measure to voters at the next general election in November.

Marijuana activists in two communities - Grant and Klamath counties - tried to overturn local bans earlier this year with referendums that local voters rejected.

One consequence of opting out: Governments that reject legal pot don't get a share of the tax revenue generated statewide by recreational marijuana sales.

Hundreds of Oregonians with marijuana-related arrests and convictions are seeking to have old cases set aside.

Nearly 400 people with marijuana-related arrests or convictions sought to have those crimes set aside last year, according to statistics kept by the Oregon Judicial Department.

The Legislature last year made significant changes to the way the criminal justice system treats marijuana: Lawmakers reduced penalties for most marijuana-related offenses, including growing and selling cannabis, and made it easier for people to have old pot convictions set aside, meaning sealed from public view.

Under the new law, when someone applies to have a previous marijuana-related conviction set aside, the court must consider how that person's crime would be classified today.

While the process doesn't erase the crimes from their records, it allows people to claim on an employment application or housing form that they've never been convicted of a crime.

The judicial department data shows an increasing number of people are apparently taking advantage of the set-aside provision. In 2013, for instance, 213 people applied to have arrests or convictions in marijuana cases sealed; last year, the number rose to 385. So far this year the state has received 249 applications.

Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said Oregon has among the "most progressive" policies on marijuana in the country, especially when compared with places like Florida, where possession of more than 20 grams of marijuana is a felony.

In states such as Alaska and Washington, where voters have approved marijuana reform, lawmakers have been slow to adapt, Armentano said.

"Lawmakers are resistant to those changes and they have used the time period after these laws are voted on to try to amend the laws to make them more restrictive than the voters intended them to be," he said. "Oregon is going down a very different road."

Even in the era of legal marijuana, some activities remain off-limits.

People can't consume marijuana in public. State and local regulations have put a damper on large-scale social events in Portland that feature pot consumption, essentially outlawing them. Employers can drug-test their workers and landlords can prohibit cannabis consumption and cultivation on their property.

-- Noelle Crombie

ncrombie@oregonian.com

503-276-7184; @noellecrombie