Colorado Is Now Collecting More Tax Revenue From Marijuana Than From Alcohol | HuffPost

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Colorado Collects More Tax Revenue From Weed Than From Alcohol

Daniel Tencer— The Huffington Post Canada

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Pot smokers in Colorado are getting a “marijuana tax holiday” on Wednesday because the state collected more in marijuana revenue than it expected.

The Rocky Mountain state has become the first known jurisdiction in the U.S. to generate more tax revenue from marijuana sales than from alcohol.

Colorado’s Department of Revenue reports it collected $69.9 million U.S. in marijuana revenue in the year from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015. In that same period, the state collected $41.8 million in alcohol revenue.

“It’s crazy how much revenue our state used to flush down the drain by forcing marijuana sales into the underground market,” said Mason Tvert, communications director at the Marijuana Policy Project, in a statement.

“It’s even crazier that so many states are still doing it. Tax revenue is just one of many good reasons to replace marijuana prohibition with a system of regulation.”

Colorado legalized, regulated and taxed weed after voters in the state approved a ballot initiative in 2012 to end the prohibition.

The state charges a 15 per cent marijuana excise tax (which goes to building schools), a 10 per cent “marijuana special sales tax” and a 2.9 per cent retail and medical tax. It has an alcohol excise tax of 8 cents per gallon on beer, 7.33 cents per litre on wine, and 60.26 cents per litre on hard liquor.

Under Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the state government has to waive a tax and refund taxpayers’ money if collections exceed the projected amount, hence the tax holiday. The state stands to lose $3 million to $4 million in revenue during the holiday, the Denver Post reports.

“This will be the one day out of the year when the state won’t generate significant revenue. Over the other 364 days, it will bring in tens of millions of dollars that will be reinvested in our state,” Tvert said.

Could It Work In Canada?

It’s hard to say whether Canada could generate similar levels of marijuana revenue, because Colorado relies to an extent on marijuana tourists from around the country.

In some of the popular ski towns around the state, tourists reportedly account for 90 per cent of marijuana sales. Canada could count on some marijuana tourists if it legalized, but if more U.S. states follow, the tourism effect could be minimal in the longer run.

Colorado generated $70 million U.S. in weed revenue on a GDP of $306.6 billion.

If Canada were to generate the same amount of tax revenue, relative to the size of the economy, the government would bring in around $411 million Canadian in revenue, assuming a GDP of $1.8 trillion.

Just saying.

Also on HuffPost

10 Ways Legal Marijuana Could Change The Food World In The Next 10 Years

Restaurant chains will follow Taco Bell's lead and introduce stoner-friendly dishes.(01 of10)

It's no secret that people tend to enjoy fast food after smoking marijuana -- blockbuster movies have been built on this premise. But most fast food companies have been reluctant to explicitly cater to the stoned market, for fear of driving away their more conservative patrons. Taco Bell has been more open than most about its friendliness to such customers -- and has found tremendous success with this strategy, selling billions of dollars worth of reefer-friendly dishes like Doritos Locos Tacos. As the stigma around marijuana wanes over the next decade, other chains are sure to follow suit. (credit:Taco Bell)

Food delivery companies will target lazy stoners.(02 of10)

Food delivery companies like Seamless have already become famous for releasing funny ads that highlight the advantages of ordering meals delivered to your house rather than going out to eat. So far, most of these ads have focused on relatively tame obstacles to leaving your house, such as bad weather. But these companies have already branched out into racier territory by advertising on pornographic websites, so it's only a matter of time before they do the same to lazy stoners. (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Edibles will become a major industry.(03 of10)

Walk into any decent marijuana dispensary in Denver or Los Angeles, and you'll find a plethora of marijuana-infused edibles that go way beyond the classic brownie. Faux Sour Patch Kids, sodas, chocolate-covered blueberries, you name it. These goodies have traditionally been pretty homespun: A dispensary employee might make them, or they might be contracted out to a home baker. But increasingly, edibles are made by large companies that sell to many dispensaries, and they have sophisticated branding and packaging that would be right at home on any supermarket shelf. As legalization spreads, this will only become more common. It wouldn't even be out of the question for some food conglomerate -- a Hershey's, PepsiCo or a Unilever -- to get in on the action at some point. (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Stoners will explore healthier types of munchies.(04 of10)

Want to know the secret recipe for the most delicious healthy snack? Smoke weed beforehand. Though most people associate the munchies with greasy, fattening foods like nachos, jalapeño poppers, or chocolate chip cookies, the truth is that smoking marijuana makes almost every food taste better -- including raw fruits and vegetables. Seriously, if you put a platter of crudité in front someone who's high, without giving them an alluring cheesy alternative, they will glut themselves with the healthy foods. Over the past 10 years, people have been smoking more weed and becoming more health-conscious. These two trends are on a collision course that will surely lead stoners to embrace healthier choices when they have the munchies. (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Cultivators will develop appetite-suppressing strains of marijuana.(05 of10)

This one sounds crazy. After all, didn't those first four changes all rely on the assumption that marijuana makes people ravenously hungry? Yes. And it does. Usually. But there are actually a few chemicals that naturally occur in cannabis plants that seem to suppress rather than increase appetite, notably tetrahydrocannabivarin, or THCV. So weed cultivators have started to explore the idea of crafting a new strain of marijuana that not only doesn't give you the munchies, but actually gives you a kind of reverse munchies, nipping hunger in the bud, so to speak. If done right, this could even be a promising treatment for obesity at some point in the future. (credit:Alex Wong via Getty Images)

Restaurant menus will highlight stoner-friendly dishes.(06 of10)

For years now, pioneering chefs like Roy Choi and David Chang have explicitly credited marijuana and its taste-heightening properties with fueling their creativity. They've created countless dishes that taste amazing when you're sober but even more amazing when you're stoned. So in the future, if marijuana were more socially acceptable, they might start highlighting these dishes on their menus. Maybe they'll create special "Stoner's Menus," analogous to children's menus, or put little marijuana leaf icons next to certain dishes, like the symbols some restaurants already use to point out dishes that are spicy, vegan or gluten-free. After all, everything has a way of sounding delicious when you're in a certain state, so some guidance would be much appreciated. (credit:Oliver Propst/500px)

Restaurants will serve weed-infused foods.(07 of10)

This one isn't new, strictly speaking. In 2010, after Colorado legalized medical marijuana, a man named Steve Horwitz opened a cannabis-focused restaurant called Ganja Gourmet, where he served marijuana-infused foods to certified medical marijuana patients, even allowing them to spoke joints while they dined. But it was shut down in 2011 after the City of Denver passed a law banning on-site consumption of marijuana.

Horwitz, however, thinks it's only a matter of time before he and others in the marijuana industry return to the model he pioneered back in 2010.

"It was the future of cannabis about 10 years too soon," he told The Huffington Post. "It's not going to happen in 2016, but maybe by 2020, we'll have legal marijuana in the whole country and we'll start to see more marijuana restaurants open up."

A whole corps of talented chefs around the country have already started preparing for such a future by developing recipes for truly delicious marijuana-infused foods, and famed cannabis cook Matt Gray is even writing a 200-page cookbook of all-gourmet dishes containing marijuana. The most likely scenario would be that only special marijuana-focused restaurants would ever serve their patrons salads with weed-infused vinaigrettes or cannabis-laced cheesecakes -- at least in the immediate future. But maybe, years from now, "normal" restaurants will get in on the action as well. (credit:Oliver Propst/500px)

Professional marijuana sommeliers will help pair foods with strains of weed.(08 of10)

These last three predictions are verging on science fiction territory; the marijuana legalization movement would have to accelerate rapidly for any of them to happen in the next 10 years. But the movement already has a great deal of momentum, so none of them are out of the question.

The first, and most urgently wished-for, is the mainstreaming of weed sommeliers. These trained experts in marijuana -- employed by either dispensaries or restaurants -- could point people to specific strains of marijuana that, because of their psychotropic effects or their aromatic qualities, could pair particularly well with certain foods. But for the position to really be effective in restaurants, patrons would have to be allowed to smoke or otherwise consume marijuana on the premises. (credit:Shutterstock / Minerva Studio)

Restaurants and bars will serve marijuana-infused alcoholic tinctures.(09 of10)

You already know that marijuana can be easily infused into fats and oils. Less well-known, though, is the fact that it can also be infused into alcohol. A few stoners have already taken to infusing their own marijuana tinctures, which are sometimes called "the green dragon," a reference to absinthe's nickname, "the green fairy." It's not totally inconceivable that at some point, marijuana laws would be relaxed enough to allow restaurants and bars to make and serve such tinctures as well. Horwitz, however, doesn't see it happening soon.

"There's so much regulation right now that it seems very unlikely," he said. "Restaurants already have to apply for a liquor license if they want to serve alcohol. And even if the laws at some point allow on-site consumption, they would probably still have to apply for a marijuana license if they wanted to serve marijuana, and I can't see a restaurant that has a liquor license being approved for a marijuana license as well. They'll probably have to choose one or the other."

There are also serious concerns with intoxicated driving. But hey, stranger things have happened. (credit:SHUTTERSTOCK / BOCHKAREV )

Smoking sections, or at least vaping sections, will make a comeback.(10 of10)

Remember smoking sections? Those parts of restaurants and bars where you were allowed to smoke inside? They're a distant memory across most of the country; not even bar-happy New Orleans has them anymore. And marijuana can expose bystanders to harmful secondhand smoke, just like tobacco. So the pendulum would have to swing very far indeed for marijuana smoking sections to pop up in many restaurants.

Perhaps a more likely scenario would be the rise of vaping sections open to those inhaling marijuana using vaporizers and inhaling nicotine using electronic cigarettes. The vapor they exhale does contain some odor and chemicals, but at much lower levels than traditional smoke, so some people are in favor of their spread. On the other hand, more and more cities have started to ban the use of electronic cigarettes at indoor public places like restaurants, so this, too, seems like a long shot. (credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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