In less than one year of legalizing and taxing marijuana, Colorado received nearly $70 million in tax revenue. And much of this money is going to school construction projects. In the first five months of 2015 we brought in $13.6 million for schools -- more than we did in all of 2014.

To put that in perspective, over the same amount of time, the state only raised about $42 million from taxes on alcohol. Since regulating marijuana, Colorado has freed police resources to focus on real crimes, created thousands of jobs, increased tax revenue for schools, and saw no increase in marijuana use among young people. As our Governor John Hickenlooper put it, “The people who were smoking marijuana before legalization still are. Now, they’re paying taxes.”

We’re students at the University of Colorado Boulder, where the next Republican Presidential Debate will be held in October. This debate will be focused on the economy, so we’re calling on the candidates to discuss how they would let states like Colorado continue to decide their own policies on marijuana legalization, which we’ve proven is good for our economy.

While a question about legalization was asked during the last debate, it wasn’t answered seriously by many candidates and did not address the impact legalization has on state economies. Four states now regulate marijuana like alcohol, and a handful of others are expected to in 2016.

On most issues, Republicans agree that states should be able to determine their own laws -- yet when it comes to marijuana policies they often flip-flop. The differences between state and federal marijuana laws has a negative impact on state’s rights so we want to know if the candidates would support a change in federal law so that businesses and individuals in compliance with state laws are not violating federal law.

Please sign our petition to call for a real debate on marijuana policy and the economy!