The High Cost of Smoking

“Devils’ Lettuce”, “Lighting”, “Ganja”, “Refer”. Without explicitly stating what these words represent, we all know what they refer to. Cannabis. In Colorado, this natural cash crop has blossomed over the years as it has mingled with the Colorado legislature. It is no surprise too, with Colorado generally leaning toward the left (though marginally), the idea to legalize cannabis for medical use came as an easy one for voters in 2000.

Though it was legal for medical use, “Few patients used medical marijuana until October 2009, when the US Attorney General distributed guidelines for federal prosecution of the possession and use of marijuana, ceding jurisdiction of marijuana law enforcement to state governments” (National Library of Medicine). The adage, “we fear what we don’t understand” is acutely accurate here. Even with the benefits of cannabis for patients with debilitating diseases, the government’s opinion on the matter was what took precedence. This ideal dates back to the 1920s when anti-immigration sentiments ran rampant and members of the Ku Klux Klan held political offices in Colorado; as such, cannabis was heavily denounced and frowned upon.

It’s clear now that Colorado has moved on from the viewpoint, and now has found a substantial middle ground between people that use it and those that don’t. Specifically, in 2012 legislation passed Amendment 64 that allowed the sale and buying of cannabis for recreational use for persons over the age of 21, where portions of the tax and profit made go to education. This sounds like a great proposition, given that about 27.7% of adults use cannabis in Colorado. One would expect from this that the tax collected from cannabis sales would exceed any other product, but alas, that’s not the case.

Let’s begin with a simple breakdown of how tax from cannabis sales is actually distributed. Legislation wise →

• 2012 → Amendment 64, creates a regulatory structure to handle cannabis, first 40 million dollars is used to reconstruct schools.
• 2013 → Cannabis is still subject to Colorado’s 2.9% tax, and the government has the option to levy a 15% tax for excise sales and retail sales. Proposition AA.
• 2017 → Senate Bill 267 changed how cannabis tax was distributed, and increased the retail tax to 15%, up from 10%.
• 2019 → Changed mandate to require 100% of excise retail tax to be used for school construction.

Distribution wise →

• 100% of the excise tax is used to credit Capital Construction Assistance Fund, which in turn funds the BEST (Building Excellent Schools Today) program.
• The BEST program is a grant program that helps public schools with a variety of financial burdens. These include, but are not limited to, any type of reconstruction that a school would need such as roofing, boiler room, internet, etc.

On paper, it would seem that taxing the sale of cannabis and reinvesting it back into the community would be a good thing, but I don’t think that this shows the whole story. For one, no amount of tax revenue will solve Colorado’s education problems. These are problems that lie at a systemic level that no pothead will feel good about contributing to. Additionally, the money made from cannabis sales is much, much smaller than you think. For the 2017–2016 fiscal year, cannabis sales only represented less than 1 percent of the total state budget. With such a small portion allocated to the state, there is no extra capital to finance the areas that really need to be financed.

In fact, Amendment 64 provides no additional uses for this taxed money other than “the Public School Capital Construction Assistance fund created by article 43.7, of title 22, C.R.S., or any successor fund dedicated to a similar purpose”(source here). It makes no mention of using this tax to increase teaching wages, fund under-represented communities or create programs that allow underrepresented communities the same opportunities for success as other well-off communities. I fully support and understand the need to reinvest in deteriorating public schools. It would be an affront to the teachers and students that are subjected to these conditions to have legalized a recreational drug, but yet fail to produce adequate, functional educational facilities. Perhaps it’s time for voters to begin looking at additional areas of importance that cannabis revenues can be allocated towards, in addition to restoring educational facilities.