Recent headlines proclaimed that Colorado raked in $44 million in tax revenues on recreational pot in 2014.
Amendment 64 promised voters there would be an excise tax on wholesale sales of retail marijuana, and the first $40 million raised each year by this tax would go towards public school construction.
But the 2014 revenues from that excise tax only amounted to just over $13 million.1 That’s not much school construction; it’s probably not even one whole school building.
Even among people in the marijuana industry there’s confusion, or obfuscation, about how much money from pot sales is going to schools in Colorado. The marketing director for a marijuana-infused product quoted here claimed that $40 million of 2014’s marijuana tax revenues went to “education.”
Nope – none went to education, but $13 million (not $40 million) will eventually go to school construction.
In exchange for a few school remodels a year, Coloradans have gotten:
- Marijuana tourists.
- More public pot consumption.
- Less enforcement of laws about public consumption of marijuana.
- More pot advertisement and promotion.
- More kids hospitalized due to consumption of marijuana edibles.
- Less understanding that pot is harmful to teens’ brains.
- More users among our state’s population.
- More citizens on the medical marijuana registry than prior to legalization of recreational marijuana.
- More pot on middle and high school campuses.
Not such a good deal for schools.
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1. Take a look at the State Department of Revenue’s numbers. Look at the Year-to-Date numbers for May and December 2014 and add them to get the total for calendar year 2014. The total of that excise tax is $13,341,000.
Regulate It 