Colorado has reached nearly $900,000,000 worth of cannabis sales recorded in 2015, according to data recently released by the Colorado Department of Revenue. The state had suffered a significant drop in sales during October last year, but by the end of November the pace of transactions had started to pick back up.
For Ricardo Baca of The Cannabist, the next question was obvious: “Will Colorado sell $1 billion worth of cannabis in 2015?” After some calculations and special considerations — the state would need more than $100,000 worth of pot sales from December, 2015, and only the state’s most successful month ever recorded (August, 2015) has ever reached that point — Baca argues no, it’s probably not going to happen.
To know for sure, we have to wait until the numbers for December are released by the Department of Revenue sometime next month. The odds of Colorado’s cannabis market becoming a billion-dollar industry by the end 2016, however, are looking pretty excellent.
Nearly $700,000 million worth of cannabis was sold during 2014, Colorado’s first year with a fully regulated, recreational cannabis marketplace.
There are three different levels of taxation at work across Colorado’s recreational cannabis industry: the state’s standard 2.9 percent sales tax, a 10 percent sales tax specifically designed for marijuana, and a 15 percent excise tax on all wholesale cannabis transactions.
Baca reports: “For November, Colorado collected $10.7 million in recreational taxes and fees and more than $1.5 million in medical taxes and fees, bringing the 2015 cumulative revenue total to more than $121 million.”
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