Colorado Marks 10 Years of Legal Weed
It's no ordinary milestone for Colorado, and in fact for the entire nation. The Centennial State was one of the first to launch a legal recreational market in the U.S., changing the course of history. Colorado’s governor and activists marked the historic moment of the 10th anniversary of the market launch.
It was a long road to get to the first legal recreational weed markets. The honors were taken by Colorado and Washington, following the passage of Amendment 64 and Initiative 502 respectively, back in 2012. The day of the first legal sale in Colorado was January 1, 2014, and as you can imagine, a lot has changed in a decade.
Colorado’s Legal Marijuana is 10 Years Old
Colorado’s governor, Mr. Jared Polis said in a statement his state has led by example over the first decade of legalization, informing the national debate and decision-makers and helping dozens of other states to convert to legal markets.
“Since Colorado voters legalized cannabis a decade ago, Colorado has developed one of the leading regulatory systems in the world and inspired countless others like it across the country and around the globe,” Mr. Polis said in a statement for Marijuana Moment.
“The legal cannabis industry has created thousands of jobs and helped grow our economy and we have made important progress around equity, industry growth, banking, and utilized sales revenue to build schools around the state,” the governor said. “We continue pushing for a better, more efficient, and more just system that best serves the people of Colorado.”
Colorado legal weed retailers have sold over $15 billion worth of marijuana for recreational use since the market launch in 2014. This has generated more than $2.5 billion in cannabis tax revenue, and those money have been redirected to fund various public programs and services.
The state’s legalization experiment has been a success, demonstrating to the rest of the country that moving away from criminalization is the better choice to make. That there are many possibilities for users to effectively transition to the legal market, control the access to drugs among younger populations, and promote public health in general.
Hopefully, the New Year brings on many more legalization initiatives and new states that enter the regulated market, not only here in the U.S. but also that prohibition ends also in countries overseas.
Also read on Soft Secrets:
- Colorado Weed Retail Pass $15 Billion Since 2014
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Stephen Andrews
