I had stricken the following from a draft paper before seeing in Time magazine (November 11, 2010, at 36) that Colorado is planning video monitoring of marijuana grow sites:
=======
Whether governments or private parties cultivate and distribute marijuana, prevention of bootlegging involves keeping the substance from leaving the legal supply chain in the hands or orifices of workers. Strict rules might help to prevent that kind of leakage. For instance, a State could have chemists hired by the Government perform measurements in public for weight, and, if necessary, for potency. Courts are now open to the public in person, and some allow televised proceedings. Similar openness and technology could allow citizens to watch from elevated seats or via multiple remote live video feeds as officials assess the tax at the moment of the placement of the goods under bond and seal. Government control of the entire supply chain could similarly allow outdoor cultivation sites to be under constant video surveillance, with the feeds available to the public.
Multiple feeds, to the point of redundancy, are so cost effective that institutions from prisons to shopping malls display them on banks of monitors. Such remote surveillance of marijuana operations, available to the public at will, could deter theft by both insiders and outsider thieves. That deterrence might outweigh the danger that thieves could exploit the video feed to reconnoiter a site for a break-in.
The Center for New Revenue 