The line along Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard looked like a windfall for Farma.

A crowd started gathering outside the Portland medical-marijuana dispensary shortly before 10 am on Oct. 1, the first day of legal recreational pot sales in Oregon. By the end of the day, more than 250 customers at Farma bought weed at $70 a quarter-ounce.

But Farma co-owner Jeremy Plumb isn’t expecting to keep much of the money.

“People don’t understand,” Plumb says. “They see this huge volume of business and they think we must be making money hand over fist.”

The long lines and eager customers at Portland’s pot dispensaries this week disguise a bitter financial reality: Much of the cash from Oregon’s legal weed sales is being inhaled by the Internal Revenue Service.

That has long been the case for medical marijuana. The legalization of recreational weed has generated a land rush of investors looking to cash in, but many newcomers are getting a rude surprise. [Read more at Willamette Week]