While the Trump Administration threatens the recreational marijuana industry with a large-scale crackdown, one Colorado county is proving that the thriving legal weed industry is creating unprecedented benefits for the community, even those who have no part in the cannabis industry.
In Pueblo County, about an hour south of Colorado Springs, a $475,000 scholarship program has been created to help the county’s graduating high schoolers pay for higher education. Out of that $475,000 pot, $425,000 came from taxes on the county’s legal weed businesses.
"A couple years ago, these are dollars that would have been going to the black market, drug cartels," Pueblo County commissioner Sal Pace told local news station KKTV in an interview. "Now money that's used to fund drug cartels is now being used to fund college scholarships."
And if you graduate from a Pueblo County high school this year, you’ll automatically have access to at least $1,000 of the fund to use towards tuition at Pueblo Community College or Colorado State University – Pueblo.
Marijuana taxes in Pueblo County currently sit at 3%, but that tax will grow 1% every year until 2021, which will eventually have the county collecting 7% of the take on all weed grown. In addition to the tax escalation, Pueblo will welcome more cannabis cultivators in the coming years, creating even more tax funds that are, in part, expected to help grow the scholarship fund even larger.
So while Trump and his surrogates extol the evils of recreational weed, at least one class of kids will have a little less student debt, with hopefully many more to come.
