Colorado Senate Gives Approval to Bill Legalizing Marijuana Deliveries
Colorado’s Senate has voted in favor of a bill that would legalize marijuana deliveries, among some other changes.
The Senate approved Senate Bill 192 yesterday through its second reading, and today it was passed through its third and final reading. It will now be sent to the House of Representatives, where passage would send it to Governor John Hickenlooper.
According to its official summary; “The bill allows a medical marijuana center and a retail marijuana store to apply for an endorsement that allows the center or store to deliver marijuana. The centers and stores with the delivery endorsement may use an employee or contract with a medical or retail marijuana transporter to make the deliveries.” The endorsements for medical marijuana would begin January 2, 2018, and the endorsements for retail marijuana would begin January 2, 2019.
The bill also “allows the state licensing authority to authorize single-instance transfers of retail marijuana or retail marijuana products from a retail marijuana licensee to a medical marijuana licensee based on a business need due to a change in local, state, or federal law or enforcement policy. If granted, the transfer must be completed within 6 months of the date the transfer was approved.”
Under current law, the department of revenue determines the average market rate for purposes of excise tax collection on retail marijuana every 6 months. The bill “gives the authority to calculate the average market rate to the marijuana state licensing authority and requires calculation on a quarterly basis. The average market rate cannot include taxes paid on sales or transfers. The bill requires a separate average market rate for unprocessed marijuana for extraction that is lower than the average market rate for unprocessed marijuana for direct sale. The bill states that the average market rate should be used to calculate the excise tax on affiliated transactions, and the contract price should be used to calculate the excise tax on unaffiliated transactions.”
Click here for more information on Senate Bill 192.
[Update: This article has been updated to reflect that Senate Bill 192 has now passed its third reading in the Senate.]