Pueblo City Council votes to suspend excise tax on recreational Marijuana

PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) - Tuesday night, the Pueblo City Council voted to temporarily suspend the city's excise tax for recreational Marijuana cultivated within city limits.

It's an extra eight percent fee charged to those businesses, a fee that is often passed along to consumers during a time when business is slowing overall for Marijuana growers, according to the Director of Dispensary Operations for Apothecary Farms.

City Council's decision was contended, both sides well-supported. Ultimately, the decision was made to drive more revenue into these businesses and create jobs.

"Ultimately, absolutely, as an industry, it's been impacted," Marshall Marquardt, director of dispensary operations said.

But the growers and distributors aren't the only ones impacted by the decision. According to the President of Pueblo City Council Heather Graham, the tax revenue drove hundreds of thousands of dollars into the city budget.

"I think that this tax was put in place for a reason. I think that saying that we are going to lose a minimal amount of $500,000 over the next three years is -- I don't think that we can afford to lose that tax revenue that's coming in," Graham said.  

She was overruled in an effort to keep Pueblo competitive with the rest of the market.

"There's been a contraction within the marketplace in cannabis and in particular cultivation has seen some of the hardest hit businesses and it is a commodity," Salvatore Pace, Chair of the Marijuana Policy Project Board said.

Pace was behind the initial tax for the City of Pueblo and said that he regretted the policy in hindsight.

Now, with the tax removed, it is hoped that growers return and that dispensaries can even pass some of the savings onto consumers.

"We understand that cannabis has to be taxed. And ultimately a lot of times, unfortunately, it gets passed on to the consumers," Marquardt said.