November 23, 2010 – Medical-marijuana dispensaries are now putting hundreds of thousands of dollars a month into state and city treasuries in Colorado.

So far this year, the state has collected more than $2.2 million in sales tax from dispensaries. In Denver, which has more dispensaries than any other city in Colorado, the businesses have also paid more than $2.2 million this year in local sales tax. Colorado Springs has collected about $380,000 in local sales tax.

“It’s just another excellent example that shows that medical marijuana isn’t just amazing for patients but it’s also productive for non-patients — for neighborhoods and cities,” said Betty Aldworth, the executive director of the pro-dispensary industry group Coloradans for Medical Marijuana Regulation.

The money is certainly welcomed in government budget offices across Colorado, which have struggled to keep the books balanced during the recession. But, in the overall budget picture, the infusion is little more than a speck. Colorado, for instance, took in more than $1.8 billion in sales-tax money during the fiscal year that closed at the end of June, according to the governor’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting.

In Colorado Springs, dispensaries represented 0.5 percent of the city’s October sales-tax revenue. In Denver, they are on pace to be about 0.7 percent of the city’s projected $417 million in sales-tax revenues this year. By comparison, restaurants — the city’s sales tax champs — bring in about $6 million per month, city budget director Ed Scholz said.

“So it’s not a significant amount of money,” Scholz said.

Still, medical-marijuana advocates said the revenues show that their industry deserves a place in local economies.

In Denver, for instance, monthly marijuana-related sales-tax receipts since March have stabilized around $265,000, which Norton Arbelaez, the owner of the River Rock Wellness dispensary, said shows medical-marijuana businesses can provide a consistent revenue stream. He also said sales-tax receipts should nudge upward if Colorado’s medical-marijuana patient registry — now at about 115,000 people, according to the state Department of Public Health and Environment — continues to grow.

Arbelaez — who is also the chairman of the board of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group, a statewide trade organization — said the revenue is an argument for the continued legitimization of the dispensary system.

“This isn’t new money,” Arbelaez said. “Patients, before we had medical marijuana in Colorado, were spending this money in the black market. … This is money that the city and state get a piece of as well.”

State Attorney General John Suthers — who authored an opinion that medical-marijuana sales in Colorado should be taxed but who has also contended dispensaries are beyond what state voters intended when they legalized medical marijuana — said through a spokesman that the new revenue stream doesn’t change his opinion of dispensaries.

Suthers also said focusing just on revenue ignores other impacts dispensaries may have on the community.

He noted a report by Education News Colorado showing that drug-related suspensions at schools in the state are up by nearly a third, something some attribute to the more open availability of marijuana.

Aldworth, with Coloradans for Medical Marijuana Regulation, conceded that the revenue numbers probably won’t persuade cities that have banned dispensaries to reconsider.

“People don’t get excited about medical marijuana because of the tax revenues,” she said. “That’s just another bonus. People get excited about medical marijuana when they see its effects on the patients.”

By John Ingold. Source.

Actor Seth Rogen was Conan O’Brien’s first guest on his new late night talk show on TBS Monday night. During the course of the interview, Rogen and Conan discussed California’s Prop 19, and their brief conversation hints at some of the apathy among California smokers with respect to the marijuana legalization initiative.

CONAN: Now, I don’t want to make any assumptions about you. I know you, I don’t say I know you better than a lot of people in the business, but I’m guessing that you were disappointed that Proposition 19 failed.

ROGEN: Yeah, I was – the marijuana proposition. But the good news is, literally anyone on Earth can get a medical marijuana card.

CONAN: This state – that’s the thing that I couldn’t understand. This state, it was such a big question: will they legalize marijuana or not? And it looks like it’s a fairly easy thing to do, to get a medical marijuana card.

ROGEN: Yes, I have a medical marijuana prescription personally. I went in, they said, “what do you need it for?” I said, “I have a very specific ailment – it’s called, I ain’t got no weed on me right now.”

CONAN: “I ain’t go no weed on me.”

ROGEN: That’s how I worded it. And the lady said, “We actually have just the thing for that.”

This exchange really points to some, though of course not nearly all, of why Prop 19 failed. There are legions of California voters who already have easy access to marijuana that, for all intents and purposes, is “legal” in the minds of those consumers.

Of course, there are thousands of people in California and elsewhere that require medical marijuana just to get through their days. It’s why we worked hard in Oregon, South Dakota, and Arizona this year to help patients in those states get safe access to medical marijuana.

But it’s no secret that people like Seth Rogen and Snoop Dogg have medical marijuana cards, and can go to a store to buy marijuana, because they have the “very specific ailment – called, ‘I ain’t got no weed on me right now.’”

There’s much to be discussed about why Prop 19 did not succeed, and many of the reasons go well beyond the current culture of marijuana in California. Just Say Now just conducted a survey of our supporters about the campaign, and will soon prepare a report of our findings. Yet this video struck me as representative of some problem that exists to motivate the general public that already embraces, if not uses, marijuana, to support a legalization initiative when for all intents and purposes, marijuana is basically legal in the state. Source.