Colorado finally might be coming down from its high. Many — parents, especially — have realized that the legalization of marijuana has not gone as planned. With the industry at perhaps its most vulnerable point yet, we should scrutinize the harm it has done to the Centennial State. The health and well-being of Colorado would be better off with a smaller, weaker, less influential marijuana industry.
Colorado’s market for marijuana has matured and might have peaked. The Colorado Department of Revenue reported $325.1 million in tax revenue in 2022, down from $423.5 million in 2021 and $387.5 million in 2020. While this might sound like a lot, this is a fraction of 1% of our budgeted tax revenues this year.
The Marijuana Industry Group, a Colorado-based trade group, announced Colorado had the “worst 4/20 in five years.” Vangst, a marijuana industry jobs platform, reported that Colorado’s marijuana industry lost 28% of its jobs, or 10,481 lost jobs, this past year. Marijuana sales are declining, causing the industry to lay off its workers. As sales have plummeted, so too have tax revenues.
Given the harm the marijuana industry exacts on public health and public safety, as well as the environment, there’s reason to welcome a reduction in influence.
We can only hope the related consequences of use might also begin to subside. That’s an outcome people on both sides of the marijuana debate should agree would be good.
Ill effects
Take the number of marijuana-related calls to poison control centers, for example. In 2011, the year before Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana, 86 marijuana-related exposures were reported to Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety. In 2021, it nearly quadrupled to 310. Of these exposures, 56.5% involved edibles (marijuana-infused brownies, candies, and the like) and 48.7% involved children who were 5 or younger. Two-thirds were marijuana-only calls, indicating that no other substance or product contributed.
The Colorado Department of Public Health & Safety reported, “The largest percentage increases in reported marijuana exposures to RMPDS occurred when adult-use cannabis retail and medical markets opened to the public in 2014 and 2010, respectively.” Just as the expansion of the market for marijuana resulted in more exposures, we can expect a contraction to result in fewer.
We can only hope this trend should follow for marijuana-related hospitalizations and emergency department visits, which can range from a person getting too high to cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. The track record has not been good. In 2021, in Colorado, a cannabis code was cited in 15,240 hospitalization discharges and 12,248 emergency department discharges. The age groups with the highest rates of related discharges were 13–17 and 21–25.
Colorado has also experienced an increase in marijuana-impaired driving, causing an increase in fatal crashes due to these drivers. The Rocky Mountain HIDTA, a federal law enforcement partnership, reported, “Since recreational marijuana was legalized, traffic deaths involving drivers who tested positive for marijuana more than doubled from 55 in 2013 to 131 people killed in 2020.”
The percentage of fatal crashes that involved a driver who tested positive for marijuana nearly doubled from 11% to 20%. A 2022 report from the Colorado Department of Public Safety warned about “a growing cultural acceptance of marijuana use and driving.” It’s time we had a conversation about how to get serious about this.
Colorado’s dispensaries have also become magnets for crime. Denver reported in 2023 that “Marijuana businesses make up less than 1% of all businesses in Denver but account for approximately 6% of all reported business burglaries.” And don’t let the industry fool you: they’re not stealing the cash — thieves are targeting the much more valuable product. This, combined with the Common Sense Institute’s report last year of astronomical statewide increases in crime since the year we legalized marijuana should bring additional concern.
What about the promise of legalization ushering in a new era of racial equity, whereby communities of color could establish generational wealth through ownership in the marijuana industry?
Despite 9% of Denver’s residents being Black, the same 2023 report found that only 4.4% of marijuana license owners are Black. 90.2% of license holders are White, though the city is only 69% White. 79.2% of license holders are male. As I predicted several years ago, despite empty promises by the industry and supporters of legalization to the contrary, the marijuana industry is now overwhelmingly run by White males. So much for legalization advancing racial equity.
As the marijuana sales decline in Colorado, the use of other illicit drugs might also decline. The 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health reveals that individuals who use stronger drugs often co-use them with marijuana. Compared with those who do not use marijuana, daily users of marijuana were 48 times as likely to have used cocaine in the past year (14.4% vs. 0.3%), 25 times as likely to have used methamphetamine (5.0% vs. 0.2%), and 5 times as likely to have misused opioids (11.9% vs. 2.1%). Daily users were also nearly five times as likely to have had “heavy alcohol use” in the past month (17.8% vs. 4.8%).
These data indicate a truth we must face: if an individual does not use marijuana, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll jump to the use of more lethal illicit drugs. Our state government should use this year’s decline in sales as a start of a campaign to reduce use and the associated harms.
Kids undermined
It’s also worth noting that the rate of illicit drug use in Colorado is significantly higher than the national average. In 2021, Colorado’s rate of past-month illicit drug use among those 12 or older — which counts the use of any illicit drug (marijuana, cocaine, meth, fentanyl, etc.) — was 41% higher than the national average, at 20.20% and 14.29%, respectively. Among those between the ages of 12 and 17, Colorado’s rate was 51% higher than the national average.
Perhaps as you’d expect in Colorado, a state that prides itself on its acceptance and use of marijuana, its 12–17-year-olds have the second highest rate of youth marijuana use in the nation, at 17.52% and 10.47%, respectively — a rate 67% higher than the national average. For context, Utah is at 6.16%, Kansas is at 8.63%, Nebraska is at 8.69%, and Wyoming is at 9.03%.
What did Colorado do from a policy perspective that these neighboring states did not?
Between 2015 and 2021, as the national rate of marijuana use among 12– to 17-year-olds decreased from 12.29% to 10.47%, Colorado’s rate increased from 16.21% to 17.52%. Even the rate of youth use in Alaska, the state that has had the highest rate, declined from 18.86% to 18.29%. Colorado is on track to have the highest rate of youth marijuana use in the nation.
This has coincided with the increasing potency of marijuana. Between 2014 and 2020, the average potency of flower (the type used in joints) in Colorado increased from 14% to 19% THC, while the average potency of concentrates (oils, waxes, and dabs) increased from 46.4% to 67.8%, with several dispensaries advertising products that are 99% THC potent. Between 2019 and 2020 alone, the average potency of vapes in Colorado increased from 69.1% to 79.7%. Following the playbook pioneered by the tobacco industry, Colorado’s marijuana industry has been making their products more addictive.
This is particularly troubling given the association between the use of high-potency products and mental health issues. Users of high-potency marijuana are four times more likely than users of low-potency products to become addicted, and daily users of marijuana above 10% THC are nearly five times more likely to develop psychosis than non-users. The National Institute on Drug Abuse warned, “The risks of physical dependence and addiction increase with exposure to high concentrations of THC, and higher doses of THC are more likely to produce anxiety, agitation, paranoia, and psychosis.”
A recent study also found that up to 30% of cases of schizophrenia in young males could have been averted if cannabis use disorder, also known as addiction to marijuana, had been prevented.
The organization I help lead, Smart Approaches to Marijuana, has been warning for more than a decade that marijuana is associated with numerous harms to physical and mental health. Because marijuana is far from a harmless drug, a point that activists for legalization are conceding, these exceptionally high rates of use should concern all Coloradans. They threaten to harm our loved ones and our state’s next generation.
Moreover, the price of this supercharged marijuana has become much more affordable in Colorado. Between 2014 and 2020, the average price of a gram of flower in a recreational dispensary declined from slightly more than $14 to less than $6. Likewise, the average price of a gram of concentrate fell from more than $45 to less than $20. Coinciding with the recent decline in sales of marijuana, the commercialization of the drug has driven the price down and left many dispensaries struggling to cover their costs.
No bailout
The aforementioned Marijuana Industry Group has begun sounding the alarm, though their solution aims to benefit the industry, not the residents of Colorado. Their executive director said the industry is in “dire need of a regulatory overhaul to prevent more cannabis small business owners from closing their doors.” He called for a “new approach to marijuana policy.”
The growth of Colorado’s marijuana industry wasn’t going to last forever. Now, the industry must come to grips with the potential of declining demand for its addictive, supercharged products.
With razor-thin margins, the industry wants to lower taxes, which would undermine one of the most common arguments for legalization. However, the harm done by marijuana vastly exceeds whatever is received in tax revenue. The Centennial Institute estimated that every $1 in tax revenue was associated with $4.50 in costs — due to outcomes like traffic fatalities, hospital visits, and lost productivity. If taxes are further lowered, this ratio will become even wider.
Rather than bailing out the marijuana industry, policymakers should focus on driving usage down even lower. The “worst 4/20 in five years” should be framed as a win for public health, not as a cause for concern about the health of the marijuana industry. The state must work to ensure access to on-demand treatment, helping those who have developed cannabis use disorder — these individuals are the industry’s most profitable customers.
To prevent youths from becoming lifelong users, the state should scale up statewide prevention campaigns about the harms of marijuana. Otherwise, Colorado will soon have the nation’s highest rate of youth use.
Policymakers should also focus on supply reduction. The struggling marijuana industry would agree with this goal of cracking down on the illicit market. The 2022 HIDTA Report to Congress noted that, “Traffickers and [drug trafficking organizations] source the majority of marijuana and THC products from Colorado and West Coast states that have legalized the recreational and/or medical use of marijuana and related products.” Though supporters of legalization assured skeptical voters that this policy would eliminate the illicit market, this outcome has failed to occur a decade later — given the maturity of the legal market, it’s safe to safe it’ll never happen.
Colorado’s experience as the first state to legalize recreational marijuana should serve as a cautionary tale to the rest of the nation. Many other states that legalized marijuana will likely soon experience similar contractions and declining tax revenues.
The marijuana industry’s honeymoon phase is over. Marijuana tourism has declined because many people have either lost interest or can purchase marijuana in their home states.
At the same time, many residents are waking up to the harms and unintended consequences of legalization, ranging from more traffic fatalities and emergency department visits to higher rates of youth use. For any number of reasons, the hype around legalization isn’t what it used to be.
If Colorado’s marijuana industry is on the brink of contracting, it’s families, children and public health that will win.
Luke Niforatos is executive vice president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana and the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions.
Your Privacy Choices