The Vancouver Sun reports in its Wednesday edition that British Columbia's first hit from legal cannabis has fallen far short of the prelegalization estimates written into last year's budget. The Sun's Derrick Penner writes that the provincial Ministry of Finance expects B.C.'s share of federal excise taxes on legal marijuana sales will be $68-million over the next three years, substantially less than the estimate of $200-million over three years that the province wrote into its 2018-19 budget. B.C. has received its first $1.3-million payment from the federal government as its 75-per-cent share of excise taxes for the month of October, the Ministry of Finance confirmed this week. The 2018-19 budget had expected $50-million for the first partial year of legalization , and $75-million per year for the following two years. Total cannabis sales figures in B.C. are hard to come by. B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch spokesman Viviana Zanocco said that the branch is not reporting sales data for its B.C. Cannabis Stores, on-line or in-store, because it represents competitive business information. However, the BCLDB has so far handled 84,480 separate cannabis sales on-line and 47,730 at the first physical store in Kamloops.