How Pot Went Legit: Q+A With Weed Land's Peter Hecht

"When you go from a product that has been illegal for generations and you legalize it—in this case, under the medical marijuana laws—you need rules and a framework...and California never had that. And it left not only the state vulnerable, but these individual businesses vulnerable to prosecution," says Peter Hecht, journalist and author of the book Weed Land: Inside America's Marijuana Epicenter and How Pot Went Legit.

Reason TV interviewed Hecht at Reason TV's Los Angeles studio for an internet livestream on Reason TV's YouTube Channel. In the interview, Hecht discusses the economic, political, and social journey California has taken in the legalization of medical marijuana and compares its relatively unregulated and sometimes chaotic medical marijuana market to markets in other states, such as Washington and Colorado.

Watch the video above for an in-depth exploration of California's legalization process. Visit http://reason.com/reasontv for full text, associated links, and downloadable versions of this video. Subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel for daily content like this.

Interview by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Alexander Manning and Carlos Gutierrez. Edited by Carlos Gutierrez. Music by The Custodian of Records. Run time: 37 min.