Colorado pot shops sold more than $88 million of marijuana and related accessories in January 2016, according to from the state s Department of Revenue.
The state s pot shops peddled $56.5 million of recreational marijuana in January 2016 — up 55 percent from but down 9 percent from the retail market s record-breaking December 2015 figures.
Colorado pot tax
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Medical marijuana dispensaries in the state sold more than $32 million of cannabis in January, down 18 percent from the previous month.
Marijuana industry data specialists say the market s downturn after a big December is to be expected.
Bear in mind that in every other consumer product category December is a huge month, and December is already the biggest month that we ve seen (in Colorado marijuana), said Roy Bingham, founder of Boulder-based . It has to do with Christmas and gifts, and I suppose that there may be an element of that happening in the cannabis market now. It s certainly something to share at your holiday parties. You could imagine people stocking up during the holidays.
Attendees at the Cannabis Cup look over a selection of marijuana-themed shirts at the Denver Mart on April 19, 2015. (Seth McConnell, Denver Post file)
Accessories such as T-shirts and vaporizers make up an average of 3 percent of state shops overall sales, according to BDS director of analytics Tom Jones.
Among the taxes collected on retail pot sales is the school-funding 15 percent excise tax on wholesale marijuana transfers, which amounted to $3.7 million in January. One of the cornerstones of the campaign that successfully ran Colorado s pot-legalizing Amendment 64 says that the first $40 million raised by that excise tax will go toward school construction projects.
That specific tax totaled $13.3 million in 2014 and $35 million in 2015, and BDS s Bingham is confident it will easily top $40 million in 2016.
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We would be confident that at the current growth trend rates it s going to exceed $40 million this year, Bingham said. We re not big prognosticators of the future, but you can more or less draw a straight line of this year s growth on the adult-use side and assume that that trend, even if it slows down a little, will grow and eventually exceed $40 million. That would be a growth of only 12 percent on the year, and it ll be a lot more than that.
Colorado marijuana outlets sold more than of product in 2014 and more than in 2015. Year-over-year totals for taxes and license fees grew too, from $76 million in 2014 to $135 million in 2015.
There are three types of state taxes on recreational marijuana: the standard 2.9 percent sales tax; a 10 percent special marijuana sales tax; and a 15 percent excise tax on wholesale marijuana transfers. For January, Colorado collected more than $10.8 million in recreational taxes and fees and $1.6 million in medical taxes and fees.
Sales stats for Colorado weedA month-by-month look comparing sales of recreational and medical marijuana 2016 Recreational total (1 month)$56,488,7142016 Medical total (1 month)$32,021,2892016: $88,510,0022015 Recreational total (12 months)$587,834,2192015 Medical total (12 months)$408,350,5692015: $996,184,788
