Colorado enjoys cash windfall from legal marijuana, but DNC head spurns it

Colorado did well by marijuana at the start of 2014, and in April marijuana did well by Colorado.

Recreational pot sales became legal in the Centennial State on January 1, and by the time April 20 (4/20, an informal national cannabis holiday) rolled around, legal weed advocates were, um, stoked to flock to Colorado’s pot dispensaries to celebrate.

And celebrate they did — to the point where the month of April was the best yet for Colorado’s pot-taxing coffers. Newly released records show state sales of recreational marijuana logged in at $22 million for the month — that’s 22 million very taxable dollars — a 17 percent increase over March.

That’s news. Good news, even, for Colorado, and for states like Washington looking ahead to similar permissive regimes (despite the fact that some localities think otherwise). But it is not particularly surprising. Even those who have opposed liberalized marijuana laws will admit there’s money to made — and taxed — there.

What is a little surprising is that even though $22 million in recreational sales is a tidy sum, it pales in comparison to the medical marijuana market. Medicinal cannabis sales were $32 million in Colorado in April, and that is actually down $2 million from March.

Now, there are several likely reasons for this. Medical marijuana has been legal years longer in Colorado, and it comes with different sociological baggage and a different tax and pricing structure, but even if the recreational and medicinal numbers normalize over time, it still says money money money to state budgets and the politicians who love them.

Which makes this next point even more surprising: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the veteran U.S. Representative and head of the Democratic National Committee, has voiced opposition to a November ballot initiative in her state permitting medical marijuana. And she has done so at some personal expense, it appears.

Wasserman Schultz, who talks of her own “pot free” breast cancer treatments to buttress her argument, has lost the backing of a Major Democratic donor, John Morgan. Morgan, an Orlando-based attorney who boasts he’s raised $250,000 for the Representative over the years, says she will never see another dime of his money thanks to her fight against legal medicinal marijuana. And, in what became a heated and quite personal attack on DWS, Morgan added, “I will never give a penny or raise a penny for the national party while she’s in leadership.”

Morgan says he has procured millions for Democrats, and that is really not in dispute.

Wasserman Schultz will also face attack ads from the advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA), which says it will keep up the pressure from now till November against Florida candidates who oppose the marijuana ballot initiative. ASA has received $4 million from Morgan.

On the other side of the Florida fight, the just-sprouted Drug Free Florida Committee, backed by $2.5 million from casino magnate and GOP super-donor Sheldon Adelson.

A May Quinnipiac poll showed 88 percent of all Floridians support legalizing medical marijuana. Most recent surveys show majorities nationwide also favor allowing doctors to prescribe medicinal cannabis.

So, all eyes on Wasserman Schultz — who, even without Morgan’s money, does quite nicely, thank you, with the help of law firms, beer distributors and a variety of hospital, medical, and pharmaceutical interests — not so much to see if she, herself, can weather a summer’s attacks from ASA, but rather to see how long her party brethren will swap quantifiable cash on the barrelhead for DWS’s contrarian principles.