News

Board Member Spotlight: Jennifer Benda

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Colorado Leads welcomed Jennifer Benda of Hall Estill to its Board of Directors earlier this year.

A former Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Jennifer is an experienced tax attorney who handles tax controversy and income tax planning and compliance matters. She serves as a steadfast advocate for clients, developing relationships with IRS personnel and IRS Appeals and state departments of revenue, and leverages these relationships to successfully resolve her clients’ tax matters. While Jennifer recognizes that out-of-court solutions can be more beneficial to her clients, she is prepared to take cases to court when necessary to ensure her clients are treated fairly.

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Advocating for a Responsible and Balanced Potency Policy

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Colorado Leads was at the table during this year’s legislative session, collaborating with policymakers and stakeholders to help create a bill with responsible regulations and balanced public policy.

HB-1317, floated by a Democratic state lawmaker, was originally a broad and far-reaching bill. It included provisions to ban any form of legal marijuana, recreational or medical, that tested over 15% on THC potency. Politics surrounding the bill made outright opposition difficult, if not impossible, so Leads seized the opportunity to influence changes to the bill that would not jeopardize the continued existence of the cannabis industry.

Leads organized and led strategy sessions with lobbyists, stakeholders, and patient advocates to fight the bill in the Legislature and in the court of public opinion. Leads and other industry leaders proactively recommended limits to how much marijuana product 18- to 20-year-olds with medical marijuana cards can purchase daily and proposed using the already-in-place statewide tracking system to determine when individuals reach their daily legal limit.  Leads also engaged in a proactive communications strategy through reaching out to patients, parents, veterans, law enforcement, and cannabis leaders for news stories, letters to the editors, op-eds, and TV interviews.

These careful and thoughtful recommendations were adopted by the sponsors of HB-1317 and are perhaps the most critical provisions in the legislation that passed in the General Assembly

Colorado Cannabis Sales and Tax Revenue Reach Record High

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Colorado cannabis sales exceeded $2.22 billion in 2021, marking a new high for the state’s steadily maturing cannabis market. The public’s share of the pie also increased, with the state collecting more than $423 million in tax and fee revenue. And that doesn’t include the tens of millions of dollars in local cannabis tax and fee revenue collected by municipal governments across Colorado.

The Denver Post reports:

“We’ve hit a record each year since sales began,” said Shannon Gray, marijuana communications specialist at the department’s Marijuana Enforcement Division. Thursday’s announcement “isn’t really out of the ordinary, but more notable that we continue year after year to see an increase.”

In total, Colorado has sold a whopping amount of weed over the past eight years: more than $12 billion. The data spawns from the state’s marijuana sales reports, which track monthly sales made by both medical and retail marijuana stores by county.

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Good news on driving while impaired

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A new study shows that while driving after cannabis use was more prevalent in legal cannabis states, driving while high was actually less common. Researchers recommended states use public education campaigns – such as the Don’t Drive High campaign by CDOT – to effectively decrease impaired driving.

File under: So what does this mean for the industry?

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Trump’s new chief of staff, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) is anti-marijuana and has  consistently opposed efforts to scale back the war on marijuana. He was one of 12 GOP lawmakers who sent a letter thanking a committee chairman for delaying consideration of a House-passed bill to increase marijuana businesses’ access to banks.

“We remain opposed to liberalizing drug laws (including around banking), and we see these as some of our areas of greatest concern,” Meadows and his colleagues wrote. “We must protect our youth by preventing investment into companies that would prey upon them.”

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The coronavirus may hit the cannabis industry

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The economic fallout, that is. So far, the coronavirus outbreak has resulted in lower sales and some cannabis-related events have been canceled. And a lot of inexpensive cannabis hardware is made in China.

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In the News

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Member in the News: 

Bob DeGabrielle, CEO of Los Sueños Farms, talked to Westword about the problems cannabis growers face when hit with severe and unpredictable weather. Growers aren’t allowed under Colorado law to move plants off the property during a weather emergency.  

“From a bud product prospective, we felt like we lost about $7 million last year,” he said.

There is a bill in the state House of Representatives that would require the MED to create regulations allowing outdoor marijuana growers to make contingency plans when extreme weather threatens their plants.

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Amen 

Cannabis entrepreneurs are flocking to the Bible Belt because of its low taxes.

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More taxes? 

Newly elected Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman supports a cannabis tax increase to fund city programs.

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Another first for Colorado 

The state’s first licensed cannabis R&D firm is set to study marijuana’s effect on Alzheimer’s disease. MedPharm Holdings is the only company in the state that holds a marijuana research and development license. 

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Move to overturn the will of the voters 

Initiative 282 would repeal Amendment 64 and remove language permitting recreational use of cannabis in the state constitution.  Title Board hears the case today. 

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Records are meant to be broken . . . 

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Colorado cannabis sales hit nearly $1.75 billion in 2019, setting a new annual sales record for the state. The jump from $1.54 billion the year before is attributed by some to the proliferation of non-flower marijuana products, such as edibles and vape pens.

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Tax revenue also surpassed previous years, hitting $302 million.

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And cannabis tax money is funding important programs, like ones that fight back against bullies. Since 2016, marijuana taxes have provided $6 million to 71 schools to fund anti-bullying education. These Bullying Education Prevention Grants have helped teachers and staff train more than 34,400 students.

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Where we’re going, we need roads

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Colorado cannabis companies have sponsored more highways for clean up than any other industry.  In fact, 51 cannabis companies sponsor 66 percent of roads, or 198 miles, covered by the state’s Clean Colorado program. 

“It presents marijuana stores in a positive light,” Harsha Gangadharbatla, an advertising professor, told The Denver Post. “The money made from marijuana is put to something good, like keeping up roads and transportation that everyone uses.”

Legal cannabis is undercutting the cartels

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The head of the labor union that represents U.S. Border Patrol agents has acknowledged (albeit inadvertently) that states that legalize marijuana are disrupting cartel activity. The National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said that cartels are transitioning to other drugs in states where cannabis is legal.  More »

In 2018, a report from the Cato Institute found that substantial declines (in the illicit market) are attributable to state-level cannabis reform efforts, which “has significantly undercut marijuana smuggling.”