Some Colorado marijuana activists are unhappy about the high taxes and onerous regulations:
Sullum continues to worry about the price of legal pot:
The problem, as I explained last month, is that the short-term supply of legal marijuana is fixed. All that’s available is repurposed medical marijuana, which was grown under a six-plant-per-patient quota. Demand will continue to exceed supply at least until marijuana from the first plants officially grown for the recreational market is harvested this spring. The high prices are exacerbated by new taxes: a 15 percent excise tax, plus a special 10 percent sales tax. Denver, which is where three-quarters of the marijuana stores are located, is imposing its own special sales tax of 3.5 percent. All of that is in addition to standard sales taxes, which in Denver total 8 percent.
Black-market dealers do not collect any of those taxes, of course. Nor are they burdened by Colorado’s regulations or cultivation limits. The upshot is that prices for legal marijuana are, counterintuitively, higher than prices for black-market marijuana—a situation that critics of the hefty taxes imposed by Colorado and Washington have been predicting for months.
The Dish 