December 08, 2010 07:09 PM UTC

116,000 Licensed, Tax-Paying Pot Smokers in Colorado

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• by: Colorado Pols

The AP reports, the massive backlog of medical marijuana applications at the Colorado Department of Health has finally been cleared by armies of temp workers, and here’s the result:

[A]bout 2 percent of the state now has permission to buy pot.

The state health department said Tuesday that the backlog of patients seeking marijuana was settled earlier this month. The number of marijuana patients is about 116,000 – meaning about 2 in 100 Coloradans holds a card.

Some quick math: these 116,000 licensed medical pot users are required to pay a $90 annual registration fee to the state to keep their “red card”–that’s just under $10.5 million in revenue annually, which we strongly suspect is more than the cost of processing those applications.

In addition, those 116,000 licensed smokers are paying sales taxes on their legal marijuana purchases, resulting in many millions of dollars in new revenue for beleaguered local governments and the state. Since it’s reasonable to assume that a large percentage of these legal smokers were previously buying pot on the illicit market, what we’re talking about is a new source of revenue for Colorado that also directly reduces law enforcement expenditures.

Bottom line? You tell us how this is in any way a bad deal for Colorado, because we can’t see it. As far as we’re concerned, law-abiding citizens can toke up all they like; while our budget deficit shrinks commensurately, and space is freed in our prisons for people who truly belong there.