Late Tuesday night, voters in Colorado Springs were rejecting recreational marijuana sales by a wide margin. The 2022 election marked the first time the citizens of Colorado Springs had a direct say in whether to allow recreational dispensaries. At this point, and for the foreseeable future, the city’s 114 marijuana businesses will continue to only sell medical marijuana to card-carrying patients. Top city leaders, including Mayor John Suthers, lobbied hard against the passage of two marijuana measures on the city’s November ballot. “We’re doing fantastic financially in Colorado Springs,” Suthers said in an interview in October. “The cost to our health care system, to our schools, to our correctional facilities… far outweighs any economic benefit of [recreational marijuana.]” Proponents of the two measures argued that the city was losing millions of dollars in tax revenue by pushing local customers to legal recreational outlets at nearby Manitou or Pueblo springs. One would have legalized the sale of recreational cannabis, and the other would have directed tax dollars toward mental health and public safety programs. At the election night watch party for Your Choice Colorado Springs — the political action committee supporting the two marijuana measures — those gathered worried that dozens of dispensaries that were barely staying open pending the results of the legalization effort may now close their doors their. “They’ve been hemorrhaging money, struggling to stay open, but [we] they were hoping for a result tonight that would show confidence in them and their businesses in the city,” said Anthony Carlson, Your Choice Colorado Springs Campaign Manager. “They’re probably going to face some very difficult decisions here in the coming weeks and months about what they’re going to continue to do with themselves.” Carlson conceded Tuesday night that supporters’ hopes of passing Question 300, a measure to legalize the sale of recreational cannabis, were now over. Surprisingly, one of the two marijuana measures on the ballot passed. Proposition 301 — which would direct taxes from the sale of recreational pot to mental health and public safety programs — received approval from Springs voters. However, the passage of this measure is now rendered virtually meaningless by the failure of Question 300, which would have made these recreational sales legal in the first place. Sales of recreational marijuana appear to have been successful on the ballot in the small nearby town of Palmer Lake. That community will now allow up to two recreational dispensaries in the city after voters approved a measure there. Recreational cannabis sales are also legal in Manitou Springs in El Paso County.
