Hamner: Marijuana tax revenue intended for education and safety (letter)
Amendment 64, approved by Colorado voters in 2012, legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado, subject to local control. Proposition AA, approved by Colorado voters in 2013, taxed recreational marijuana, with the lion’s share of the proceeds earmarked for school construction and drug abuse prevention programs.
About $40 million in taxes collected on retail marijuana in the 2014-15 fiscal year, the first full year of legal sales, was supposed to go for school construction, with another $12 million pegged for the drug safety programs.
But a constitutional hiccup involving our TABOR tax limits is forcing us to hand the money back to marijuana merchants and to marijuana consumers themselves, in the form of reduced taxes on their future purchases.
Proposition BB, which is on the ballots arriving in our mailboxes this week, would allow the people of Colorado to invest marijuana tax revenue for schools and safety, which are the purposes the people intended when they legalized marijuana.
Who should benefit? Our schools and drug prevention education, or marijuana consumers? I urge you to vote for schoolkids by voting yes on Proposition BB.
Millie Hamner
State Representative, House District 61
Dillon
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