FORTUNE: Legal pot sales jumped by more than 42% in Colorado last year, pushing the Centennial State’s revenue from marijuana taxes and fees to a new high.
Colorado saw $996.2 million in legal sales of medical and recreational pot in 2015, according to the Denver Post‘s calculations of tax data reported this week (and throughout 2015) by the state’s Department of Revenue. In 2014, the state’s legal pot vendors sold roughly $699 million of the drug.
The Post also reports that the state, where legal recreational marijuana sales began two years ago and medical pot has been legal since 2000, collected more than $135 million in taxes and license fees related to legal cannabis sales last year, which is up nearly 78% from the $76 million in taxes and fees collected the previous year. Of that total, more than $35 million will go toward school construction projects, as per the state’s excise tax on recreational pot sales, while other tax revenue funds could also go toward youth and substance-abuse programs in the state, as they have in the past… (more)
