Marijuana Ain’t What It Used to Be, Part Two – Pagosa Daily Post News Events & Video for Pagosa Springs Colorado – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

Read Part One

We ended part one with a chart based on numbers from the Colorado Department of Revenue. The amount of taxes collected by our state government since the sale of recreational cannabis was approved by Colorado voters in 2012.

There are a couple of way to interpret this chart.   Either the COVID crisis, for some reason, caused marijuana sales to  jump during 2020-2022, followe3d by a decline in sales — which is perfectly possible — or else the recent legalization of medical or recreational marijuana in the states surrounding Colorado has led to less “marijuana tourism’” and the Colorado cannabis industry is looking at negative growth in the future.

There may be other explanations.

Understanding that this is a fledgling industry in Colorado, only about 10 year old, it’s hard to predict where it’s headed.

I sat down with the owner of a Pagosa marijuana dispensary a few weeks ago, to chat about how he views the industry in 2023.  I asked him to give a little background on how he got started.

“I was trying to figure out how to make it, here in Pagosa.  I come from the M&A world; Mergers and Acquisitions. One of the plays that private equity was doing was going aroudn to all of the cities that they knew were about to go legal, and buying distressed warehouses.  Distressed properties.  Because they realized that these cities would try to push the marijuana grows to these areas that needed to be revitalized.  Warehouses, etc.

“So they would…