Otto von Bismarck allegedly quipped that “laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.” We’d only add that it’s sometimes better not to read every paragraph in a new law either if you want to keep your composure.

We’re on record as praising the governor’s task force on marijuana and the lawmakers who took its recommendations and turned them into bills that eventually passed both chambers. The scope of issues tackled was daunting and the new laws will provide a solid framework as Colorado moves into a new era of retail sale of cannabis.

Perhaps inevitably, however, a policy clunker or two managed to slip through the net on the way to passage. And in House Bill 1317, the clunker is a doozy — a requirement that appears unconstitutional on its face. It says “magazines whose primary focus is marijuana or marijuana businesses are only sold in retail marijuana stores or behind the counter in establishments where persons under twenty-one years of age are present.”

So let’s get this straight: Magazines such as High Times that could be sold before the passage of Amendment 64 without being hidden from view will have to be concealed from the public eye now that cannabis is legal?

This topsy turvy result not only defies normal logic, it defies established First Amendment law as well. Government can’t regulate or suppress journalistic content, or decide how some magazines may be displayed (except those involving pornography).

It so happens that High Times — and it’s not the only such publication we could cite — covers cannabis-related news. The online issue that we checked before writing this editorial, for example, had articles with headlines such as “Colorado Senate Passes Stoned Driving Bill” and “California Supreme Court Upholds Dispensary Ban.”

How could any lawmaker conceivably conclude that such reporting isn’t protected speech?

Civil liberties attorney David Lane has already vowed a lawsuit if the governor signs the bill. “I don’t think there is any precedent that would support this,” he told Westword. “The government is permitted to regulate time, place and manner of speech, but they’re not allowed to regulate content of speech that is not obscene speech.”

Lane added that the suit would be “sort of a slam dunk as far as I’m concerned.”

We also consider constitutionally questionable the bill’s provisions banning certain forms of advertising and marketing approaches for retail marijuana outlets, although those issues are not as clear-cut.

We don’t expect the governor to veto the bill, which covers dozens of regulatory issues, because of the magazine provision. That would throw the entire regulatory process off schedule and into turmoil. But it’s too bad the attorney general’s office is about to find itself in the position of having to defend, at considerable public expense, a measure that is so patently an affront to free speech.