It seems the industry that has posed the greatest peril to Colorado’s youth since the decline of Big Tobacco – i.e., Big Marijuana – is in a slump. Slacking sales are eroding its profits.

June revenue figures released by the Colorado Department of Revenue revealed the lowest marijuana sales for the month of April since 2018. According to leading pot industry lobby Marijuana Industry Group, there’s been a 14.1% drop in marijuana sales just since April 2022. And for all last year, pot sales were down nearly $100 million from 2021. The lobby reports 2023 sales are on track to be even lower than 2022’s.

We cheer the news, as should most Coloradans, especially parents.

But of course Colorado’s pot purveyors are crying in their beer. And, believe it or not, they’re begging for help.

“As an industry, we are struggling. We are in dire need of a regulatory overhaul to prevent more cannabis small business owners from closing their doors and laying off their workers,” wailed Truman Bradley, executive director of the Marijuana Industry Group, in a press statement.

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“We earnestly hope that Colorado’s policymakers will start taking a new approach to marijuana policy,” Bradley said, “one that will protect small business owners and the public programs funded by cannabis.” 

A “regulatory overhaul”? A “new approach to marijuana policy”?

Sure, we get it; the industry wishes already-lax state and local regulation – aimed especially at keeping pot away from kids – would be even laxer. The kind of help Big Marijuana wants involves policy makers easing up on the sales of products like THC-laced edibles, which are easily concealable and likeliest to fall into kids’ hands. And the industry would like for regulators to go missing on enforcement.

In arguing for reduced oversight by authorities, the industry naturally will tout the jobs it has created and that it now is losing, as well as the revenue marijuana excise taxes have generated for state and local services.

Arguably, any gains were ill-gotten in the first place, given the damage pot does to society at large.

We’d urge policy makers not to be fooled and not to go even softer on pot’s profiteers – who already are under-regulated as it is.

Legal recreational pot has had an insidious, cumulative effect on Colorado over the years, steadily tearing away at our social fabric to say nothing of public safety and health. A growing body of data attests to that. The rippling consequences for our state bear repeating.

• Pot poses a hazard to our highways. An analysis of 26,000 impaired-driving cases in Colorado in 2019 showed 45% of drivers tested positive for more than one substance. The most common combination was alcohol and pot.
• It jeopardizes the mental health of our youth. Scientists at the Colorado School of Public Health, cataloging global pot research, found studies showing highly potent marijuana is associated with psychosis in users.
• Pot sales foment lawbreaking. A 2019 study of Colorado medical and recreational dispensaries found both types of storefronts were associated with statistically significant increases in rates of neighborhood crime.

It’s unclear why pot sales have been dipping, but all Coloradans should welcome the development. If it also means lower tax revenue and a loss of some jobs (in Colorado’s ever-booming economy), that should serve as a reminder to policy makers what an unstable source of revenue and jobs retail marijuana is in the first place. All the more reason to avoid it.

Bottom line: Pot’s peddlers deserve no pity from a state they have done so much to undermine.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board