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Cannabis taxes did not solve Colorado’s budget woes. That was never promised, or even implied by supporters of legalization.
But some money is better than no money.
From the earliest days of the 2012 political campaign to legalize cannabis, there was a promise that a certain amount of the tax revenue would go to schools. That has created confusion ever since about the role of marijuana in school funding. A typical – and frequent – question to CPR News goes, “how can schools need more tax money when cannabis businesses are making so much money?”
The short answer is marijuana tax collections are small compared to the state’s education budget.
The state has collected more than $2.3 billion in marijuana taxes since legal recreational sales began in 2014. It’s a large number, but just a fraction of the state’s overall budget. Last year, marijuana tax revenue was just .7 percent of the state budget, and less than 5 percent of just what the state spends on education.
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