{"id":8603,"date":"2019-01-04T13:15:50","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T13:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/?p=3315204"},"modified":"2019-01-04T13:15:50","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T13:15:50","slug":"where-did-all-of-colorados-pot-money-go-the-post-set-out-to-answer-that-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/where-did-all-of-colorados-pot-money-go-the-post-set-out-to-answer-that-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Where did all of Colorado\u2019s pot money go? The Post set out to answer that question"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/where-did-all-of-colorados-pot-money-go-the-post-set-out-to-answer-that-question\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><div class=\"media_block\"><\/div>\n<figure id=\"attachment_631639\" class=\"wp-caption alignright size-article_inline_half\"><img class=\" lazyautosizes lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/where-did-all-of-colorados-pot-money-go-the-post-set-out-to-answer-that-question.jpg\" width=\"600\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/where-did-all-of-colorados-pot-money-go-the-post-set-out-to-answer-that-question.jpg\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/where-did-all-of-colorados-pot-money-go-the-post-set-out-to-answer-that-question.jpg 620w,https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.denverpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/20110422__20110424_K02_BZ24BIZAWARDSp3.jpg?fit=310%2C9999px&amp;ssl=1 310w\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Migoya<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As Colorado began its fifth year of legalized recreational marijuana in 2018, The Denver Post decided it was important to let readers know about the state of the industry as its fifth anniversary loomed, a large part of which hinged on its financial successes.<\/p>\n<p>Editors at the paper decided it was a worthy plunge to unravel the morass of paperwork and bureaucracy that makes up the state\u2019s system of divvying the tens of millions of dollars collected in marijuana taxes each year.<\/p>\n<p>With a mantra of \u201cWhere\u2019d all that tax money go?\u201d we first began by digging through the variety of layers that make up tax-spending in our state.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"related right\">\n<p><em>On Jan. 1, 2014, Colorado became the first U.S. state to allow legal recreational marijuana sales. It was sold to voters as a way to fix up crumbling schools, but that\u2019s only the start of where the hundreds of millions of tax dollars has gone, according to Denver Post reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Over a four-month period, we were able to assess not only where more than $270 million in tax revenues had been allocated last year, but also drill deeply enough to learn to whom those dollars ultimately went and for what.<\/p>\n<p>Along the way, we determined there was a stream of revenue\u00a0 omitted from the typical recitation of annual collections \u2013 local sales and excise taxes that stayed in the locales where it was collected.<\/p>\n<p>By using the state\u2019s monthly reports on revenue sharing \u2013 10 percent of the state\u2019s sales tax was returned to the cities that collected it \u2013 we were able to reverse-engineer the formula to determine how much each locality had generated in overall retail marijuana sales. From that number we could apply the local tax rates to calculate how much was being collected locally.<\/p>\n<p>We couldn\u2019t figure for all cities \u2013 and the list was simply too long to call each one \u2013 because of state taxpayer privacy laws that prohibit releasing information that could identify a taxpayer. When a city had only one marijuana shop, it would be easy to know how much the business paid in taxes.<\/p>\n<p>In all, local taxes were about $80 million of funding.<\/p>\n<p>My colleagues \u2014 Jon Murray, John Aguilar and Anna Staver \u2014 divvied the work and set about telling the stories behind the tax money.<\/p>\n<p>As we narrowed the scope of our reporting, it became clear that Colorado voters were largely misinformed \u2013 either by intent of the message or ignorance in thinking \u2013 when they passed Amendment 64 in 2012 to legalize recreational marijuana.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s because the amendment clearly set goals for only the first $40 million in excise taxes: It would be earmarked for school repairs and construction. Nothing was planned for what came after that amount.<\/p>\n<p>What was never decided, yet voters presumed, was that all the tax money would be used for education.<\/p>\n<p>Through an array of complex calculations and maneuvers, state government decided what to do with the money collected beyond that initial $40 million, an amount that\u2019s now grown by more than $240 million and is likely to reach even higher.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"related right\" \/>\n<p>Chiseling through the layers, we began to see that the tax dollars derived from retail marijuana sales were actually headed toward programs and other civil projects that were almost as promised. Schools were being fixed; programs with a focus on education were being funded; even school nurses that were long-missing were coming back.<\/p>\n<p>But there was so much more. Law enforcement, agriculture and human services were the areas that also benefited from marijuana dollars.<\/p>\n<p>The Post\u2019s deeper look into the marijuana funding stream largely found that the money is being spent not in the way voters might have thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><\/div>\n<p>As Colorado began its fourth year of legalized recreational marijuana in 2018, The Denver Post decided it was important to let readers know about the state of the industry as its fifth anniversary loomed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5062,6907,6811,6857,6847,6813,77,5577,6815,5667,6858,6822,9,5019,441,8038,1,3,61,1736],"tags":[5063,6909,6816,6859,6850,6818,2655,5580,6820,5673,6860,6824,5022,3015,8039],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8603"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}