The federal budget forecasts the government will recoup some $690 million in revenue through cannabis taxes over the next five years – and expects to net some $35 million in the first year the drug is legalized.

The government already forged a 75/25 revenue-sharing agreement with most provinces and territories for a federal excise tax of roughly $1 a gram, or 10 per cent of a cannabis product’s price. The feds also agreed to a cap of $100 million a year for the first two years after legalization, and any remainder would be given to the provinces.

But provinces would be disappointed to learn the current budget forecasts breaking that mark only after two years of legal weed, and cities will also be disappointed to see nothing earmarked specifically for offsetting municipal costs of legalization – that will all have to come from the province’s share of the excise tax revenues.

Meanwhile, the Liberals announced $62.5 million in new funding across five years Tuesday for public education programming warning Canadians about the risks of cannabis use.

The budget also earmarks $10 million each to the Mental Health Commission of Canada and the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction for projects related to how cannabis affects Canadians’ mental health and for cannabis research, respectively.

The budget says Canada’s spending on cannabis public education will be “on par with the per-capita amounts spent by the State of Washington.”