Leah Welborn
“Marijuana has become the thread that holds our state budget together.” Hearing those words from a bona fide representative of government would have been nothing but a pipe dream just a few years ago. But alas, they were spoken by Colorado State Representative Jonathan Singer earlier this week on a momentous occasion: Colorado has collected half a billion dollars in cannabis tax revenue since recreational sales began in 2014. Let that sink in for a minute. $500 million.
VS Strategies, the public affairs and lobbying firm affiliated with cannabis law firm Vicente Sederberg, released a report this week detailing the tax benchmark and outlining how the funds are distributed on the state and local levels. The firm held a news conference on Wednesday to discuss the report.
Brian Vicente, co-author of Amendment 64 and partner at Vicente Sederberg, said, “It’s (the $500 million in tax revenue) a meaningful milestone. Colorado continues to be an example to the world.”
The tax on cannabis is considered a “sin tax” like those collected from the sales of liquor and cigarettes. While Colorado’s taxes on cannabis are quite high, those on liquor and cigarettes are some of the lowest in the nation. Economist Chris Stiffler of the Colorado Fiscal Institute said, “marijuana tax rates are relatively new and we’ve updated them to the world of 2017, while taxes on cigarettes and alcohol haven’t been modernized as recently as marijuana.”
Tax revenue from cannabis is distributed among a variety of governmental divisions, including youth mentoring services, substance abuse programs, marijuana enforcement, and school construction grants.
As one of the top dispensaries in Colorado, The Green Solution® is proud to be a major contributor to the tax revenue of our great state.