Is Colorado Pot Overtaxed and Over-Regulated Already?

On New Year's Day, 2014, Coloradans lined up to purchase marijuana for recreational use. Legally.

While drug reformers across the nation are celebrating the beginning of the end of marijuana prohibition (Washington state also has legalized recreational marijuana and several other states are likely to legalize weed in the next few years), Coloradans are working out how exactly to tax and regulate marijuana.

Politicians, of course, want to generate as much revenue from pot sales as they can. And others argue that marijuana sales must, at the very least, generate enough taxes to pay for regulating the industry. But how much taxation is too much taxation?

Colorado medical marijuana dispensaries get first crack at opening retail shops. They've been taking risks for several years, after all, so perhaps that makes sense. But how much regulation is necessary? At what point do regulations become protectionism? Should people outside the state, for example, be able to invest in the Colorado recreational pot industry?

Because it's illegal to smoke marijuana in public and most hotels don't allow smoking, where exactly are pot tourists supposed to enjoy their constitutional rights?

Christian Sederberg and Rob Corry are two attorneys in Denver who specialize in marijuana cases and both were instrumental in getting pot legalized in Colorado. Reason TV sat down with Sederberg and Corry recently to learn more about the debate surrounding the taxing and regulating of recreational weed in the Centennial State.

Approximately 8.5 minutes. Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

Subscribe to Reason's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new videos go live online.

Go to http://reason.com/reasontv/2014/01/06/taxing-and-regulating-legal-weed-in-colo for downloadable versions, links, and more resources about this video.