Sensi: Economic Impact of Cannabis in Colorado

The Marijuana Policy Group, a Denver-based economic and market research firm that consults with businesses and governments on marijuana policy, just released a report looking at the economic impact of cannabis in Colorado. Leland Rucker, senior editor at Sensi Magazine says that it’s the first report of its kind as it looks at the overall impact on the Colorado economy rather than on just revenue generated through direct cannabis sales.

“They’re using a different model for integrating the legal marijuana industry into the overall economy. Usually all we talk about is how much money there is and how much tax money there is this month and how much higher it is than last month, and using this model they found that legal marijuana activities generated $2.39 billion in state output in the year 2015.”

Rucker says this study is taking a look at how much money the marijuana businesses are spending money in other industries, e.g. security, data entry, accountants, lobbyists, rent etc.

In 2015 the marijuana industry created 18,000 new FTE positions. That’s 12,591 directly involved in marijuana businesses and the remainder involved in other companies that marijuana businesses are using.

“Marijuana creates more output and employment per dollar spent than 90% of all Colorado industries at this point in time.”