Today's New York Times has a nice long story about Colorado's legalized, regulated, and taxed for-profit marijuana trade. It's getting a rocky start:

Since this place opened in January, it’s been one nerve-fraying problem after another. Pot growers, used to cash-only transactions, are shocked to be paid with checks and asked for receipts. And there are a lot of unhappy surprises, like one not long ago when the Farmacy learned that its line of pot-infused beverages could not be sold nearby in Denver. Officials there had decided that any marijuana-tinged consumables had to be produced in a kitchen in the city.

“You’d never see a law that says, ‘If you want to sell Nike shoes in San Francisco, the shoes have to be made in San Francisco,’ ” says Ms. Respeto, sitting in a tiny office on the second floor of the Farmacy. “But in this industry you get stuff like that all the time.”

Boulder now has more marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks and liquor stores combined and the state is trying to figure out how to properly tax and regulate them.

The new rules, many of which will take effect over coming months, treat dispensaries a bit like pharmacies and a bit like casinos. Felons will soon be prohibited from owning dispensaries. (Mr. Werner is selling the Dr. Reefer store.) Twenty-four-hour Webcams will be trained on every growing facility and dispensary in the state. There are restrictions on hours, new rules for licensing, labeling and on and on.

Dispensary owners, generally speaking, aren’t complaining. The more regulated the business becomes, the easier it will be to operate, says Ms. Respeto of the Farmacy. The company, which was co-founded by her father, has big ambitions: to become a medical marijuana dispensary franchise and do for Super Silver Haze what Rite Aid did for pills.

The mutual- and hedge-fund managers are starting to come around, looking for moneymaking opportunities—a growth-investment opportunity if there ever was one.