Happy New Year!
Colorado celebrates five years of legal cannabis
And what a difference five years makes! Today, Colorado can proudly claim to have laid the groundwork for the safe and responsible introduction of legal marijuana, a framework that was being studied and replicated around the world last year as the industry celebrated a year of global gains.
The Denver Post take a close look at five years of marijuana legalization here in Colorado, as well as the promises and challenges that lie ahead.
Denver has seen the biggest revenue boost from the cannabis industry, the newspaper reports. But many other businesses, communities, and programs have also benefited.
The amount of money local governments will receive approach $80 million in 2018, according to The Post’s calculations. And it’s it’s the smaller places that have realized the greatest benefits.
- Parachute’s sales tax revenues took the town from bust to boom. It bounced back from a tax revenue low in 2015 of $831,000 to a projected take of nearly $1.6 million this year. More »
- Ridgway, a town of about 930, in 2014 had an annual budget of just $1.4 million fueled mostly from a 3.6 percent local sales tax. It wasn’t long before the budget grew to nearly double that amount, largely because of those new marijuana businesses. More »
- One cannabis shop in Sedgwick has provided an injection of much-needed cash, allowing the town to build a park and turn an old jail into a history museum. More »
