Legal Marijuana In Colorado Has Already Generated $15 Million For Schools
With legal cannabis available in Colorado the state has already generated more than $15 million in tax dollars that is specifically allocated for public schools, according to the latest information from the state’s Department of Education.
Starting since Jan. 1, 2014, when the state’s first retail cannabis shops opened, $15.6 million has been earned for the Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST) grant program, stated by Scott Newell, director of the office of capital construction for the state’s Education Department. The cannabis revenue for schools were generated via a special voter-approved 15 percent excise tax on pot sales.
Newell’s office supervised all budgeting flagged for school construction in the state through BEST. Along with cannabis excise taxes, additional budgeting for BEST is provided from state lottery spillover proceeds and interest, along with the state land trust all of which is put into one fund and dispersed in the forms of grants to less fortunate districts and schools.
“This year will mark the first year [marijuana] excise tax dollars will be part of the revenues we provide in the form of grants,” Newell stated.
The BEST grant program was first developed in the state of Colorado in 2008 as a way to earn additional revenue for public schools in the state to renew or replace deteriorating facilities. The scholarship money is available to state public school districts, charter schools and boards of cooperative educational services, as well as the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind. The funds can be utilized in accordance with the needs of school construction along with general construction as well as aiding renovations of existing educational facilities.
The BEST program gives out its financial support for its grant annually, Newell explained, The Department of eduction estimates that within the 2014-2015 fiscal year there is a better than not probability that the program will make available about $108 million in revenue, from a handful of sources, it will come partly from a projected $16 million in marijuana excise taxes. The following year, the education department gathers that it will rake in another $16 million from marijuana excise taxes, upwards of greater than $90 million in revenue in just a single year which will be great for the department.
The Department of Education is looking to award the BEST grant funding summer 2015.
The Denver Post recently released details that state pot businesses sold a historical amount of marijuana in January of 2015, which generated almost $3 million in excise taxes flagged for schools just for the month of january. That is 10 times the tax funds produced for schools from January 2014, which only brought in $195,318.
“Money from marijuana sales that used to disappear into the underground market is now appearing in the state’s school construction fund,” said Mason Tvert, communications director for Marijuana Policy Project and a key backer of the 2012 amendment that legalized adult use of marijuana in the state. “Colorado voters wanted a portion of the tax revenue to be used to improve our public schools, and that’s exactly what’s happening.”
In addition Tvert states that while generating tax money isn’t the most crucial reason to end prohibition and regulate cannabis, it is one of the potential gains.
“In addition to controlling the production and sale of marijuana,” Tvert stated, “it is raising significant revenue for important, otherwise underfunded programs.”
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