EDITORIAL: Time for Adams County to pull back its ill-conceived pot tax scam

Aurora’s escalating pot-tax battle against Adams County has gone far enough.

This week, Aurora lawmakers approved a thumb-in-your-eye ordinance as revenge for Adams County getting voters to raise recreational marijuana taxes on every pot shop in the county.

Here’s why this matters, and why change is needed.

What Adams County did last year seemed innocent enough on the surface: voters approved adding a 3-percent tax on recreational pot sales. There were no recreational pot sales in unincorporated AdCo at the time, and adding the tax legitimately raises money the county needs to regulate sales.

The problem is, the AdCo measure adds the tax to shops in Aurora, Northglenn and Commerce City, as well as every other city inside the large county. The county does nothing to regulate sales there. The cities do. The county does nothing to ensure the pot shops are safe and compliant. The city police forces must do that. It’s just an irrational tax hike imposed on a new industry trying to get footing, and at best, it interferes in an increasingly competitive industry.

But that’s all unimportant compared to two real problems. The first is, taxes on recreational marijuana are so high that the very cornerstone for legalizing it is in jeopardy. Colorado voters approved the end of marijuana prohibition chiefly because it hadn’t stopped people from using it, and regulating it gets the massive industry out of the hands of criminals and into the open, creating jobs and tax revenues.

The state already imposes a whopping 27.9 percent excise and sales taxes. On top of that, the city imposes its 7-percent tax rate and another 2-percent excise tax on marijuana. The giant 37 percent tax rate is causing two serious problems. It continues to push consumers into doctor offices to ask for medical marijuana cards to buy pot at dispensaries, with much lower taxes.

But worse, it not only enables but encourages black market and drug-gang sales of pot, which are tax free. Such sales come from locally grown pot entrepreneurs, and chiefly, drug-lord operations in Mexico, Central and South America. The greatest argument for ending marijuana prohibition in Colorado, across the United States and around the world is to undermine drug lords and the terror they wreak on so many.

In short order, state and local officials must revisit the tax rate to determine how much is too much, and what to do about it.

In light of all that, however, Adams County’s greedy reach into pot shops in Aurora and other AdCo cities is too much, and the county must agree to stand down on the double-dipping tax scam. It can and should impose whatever taxes are prudent and it sees fit within its own unincorporated jurisdiction, but outside of that, it’s trouble on many levels.

This is all uncharted territory for Colorado, its government officials and residents, but there’s no doubt what Adams County has done is dragging everyone in the wrong direction.