How Much Do Boulderites Spend on Cannabis?
Ever since 2012, the sale of recreational marijuana has been legal in Colorado when the state’s legislature passed amendment 64. It is no secret that Coloradans were consuming marijuana before this ruling, but no accurate data was available to measure just how much they were spending on the product. Now, with the advent of legalization, these figures are publicly available.
As a Boulder County, Colorado resident, I began to wonder, “how much exactly are we spending on cannabis?” From my perspective, it would seem that a lot of adults I encounter in my day-to-day life enjoy the occasional consumption of cannabis (some more than others.) But then, I wanted to follow this line of questioning a step further. I wanted to know how much Boudlerites spend on cannabis relative to our neighboring counties. The counties adjacent to Boulder are Denver County, Gilpin County, Grand County, Jefferson County, Larimer County, and Weld County. Initially, I assumed that it would be a toss-up between Boulder County and Denver County to see who spends the most annually on cannabis per capita.
To answer my questions, I gathered population data from the 2020 Colorado Census and data on the figures for medical and recreational sales of marijuana in each Colorado county. I then used the Python library known as Pandas to compile all of this information into an easy-to-read table and bar chart. The most recent year for reports on the sale of legal cannabis in Colorado was 2020. I combined this information with 2020 population statistics to attain the most accurate per capita figures.
Boulder County’s 2020 population was measured at 330,860 individuals, and combined they spent a staggering $138,333,017 on legal cannabis in the same year. Using these figures, I was able to deduce that Boulderites spent approximately $418 per capita on cannabis in 2020. Now that seems like a lot of cannabis consumption; surely it’s more than our neighbors? Well, it turns out that I was wrong. Denver County takes home the cannabis crown with a 2020 population of 717,632 individuals spending a mind-blowing $709,477,874 of their hard-earned dollars on the purchase of marijuana. Those figures work out to approximately $988 spent per capita for the year.
Okay, so Boulderites spent less than half as much on cannabis as their Denver counterparts. But how did they stack up against the other adjacent counties? Out of the eight I evaluated, Boulder finished in fourth place. Gilpin County came in second place with $555 spent on the purchase of marijuana per capita for 2020. Additionally, Grand County spent more than Boulder at $511 per capita. Behind Boulder County, Larimer County came in at $333 spent per capita, Jefferson County at $145, and Weld County at $111. So if a tourist asks where they should go to meet some like-minded cannabis consumers, you can tell them their best bet is to head to Denver County.
