The Cannabist reports: How much have Colorado marijuana prices dropped in 2015?
Since last June, the average price of an 1/8th ounce of recreational cannabis has dropped from $50-$70 to $30-$45 currently; an ounce now sells for between $250 and $300 on average compared to $300-$400 last year. More competition and expansion of grow facilities contributed to this price decline, but it is also a natural result for any maturing industry as dispensaries try to find the market’s equilibrium price.
This is good news. I know that there are some of the drug poicy “academics” who always seem to want prices pushed artificially high as a deterrent, but that’s a ridiculous way to look at the market.
It was certainly natural to expect high prices at the beginning as the industry was getting set up; this drop is now a good indication of the development of a healthy competitive market. Lower prices also make the black market less attractive and reduce the sense that legal cannabis is some kind of “elite” experience.
Best thing about low prices is less violence. Less violence in the sense that legitimate business owners don’t see significant increases in their profits by ‘stealing’ a few customers from their competitors. In other words, customers aren’t worth shooting each other over.
Prohibition on the other hand makes individual customers more valuable so the incentive to use violence to kill or intimidate competitors is much greater (customers become worth fighting over). This is because stealing just a handful of customers can have a huge impact on income.The barriers to using violence are reduced even further by the fact that drug dealers are already doing something that will get them a life sentence.
Another thing that should (or at least could – or might) reduce violence is something that would take a few years (but that moment might be coming soon for Colorado (and a bit later for Washington)): a restructuring of police resources. After legalization, the money saved in police resources is not immediately going to be put to good use, but after a few years you’d expect the police to learn to use it more effectively in tackling other forms of crime.
If that doesn’t happen, in any case, crime will keep dropping throughout the years as less people get criminal records (or are traumatized in jail), or for the mere fact of people feeling more legal, more like a “legitimate” member of society, and that helps people integrate and contribute better to society. Also, the more employers get used to the fact that cannabis consumers are just like any other employee, the less they will test for it, the less people will lose their jobs (or fail to get one), etc.
Another thing, is that most counties in Colorado still don’t allow recreational retail. As it expands, things will be better.
Another HUGE thing is the banking thing. When that’s sorted out that should reduce violence further.
Another thing is being able to smoke at bars. The people who are negatively affected by cannabis are the ones who are prone to paranoia, which is highly correlated with social isolation. That’s one of the reasons criminalization is so stupid, it further isolates people (besides giving them an obvious reason to be more paranoid). If people have a place to smoke where they are among other people who are openly smoking, that would greatly help reduce social isolation, improving mental health. I heard Colorado has on the ballot soon a measure to allow bars to allow people to smoke cannabis.
I also heard Colorado is the number one economy in the united states. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. It should get even better.
Good old capitalist competition..who can decry that ??
Yet the TDPF seems to prefer the non-profit “social clubs” of Spain over the Colorado model.
I prefer the Colorado model. Just treat it like alcohol already. That’s how it should have been dealt with from the start. No need to go hide in a bunker over this stuff.
Rand did a study when CA was attempting to pass Prop 19 that reported commercial marijuana would be $20 per ounce when/if enough states passed legalization laws and supply and demand took over the market.
I am sure it was another propaganda study they are famous for attempting to make sure the illegal growers in CA voted against legalization and those projected prices mixed with false claims that Prop 19 would damage MMJ divided the voters and it failed.
We are a long ways from enough states to really impact the green market and the black market much for marijuana but it will get there,,and states are starting to realize the first dozen states,,the more scattered the better,,will be the where the big cash flow and taxes will be seen but as more states come online the retail prices and the bumper crop taxes will start to drop.
Maybe by then we can get some estimates from CO/WA/OR/AK and DC on the savings in tax dollars by not arresting people for marijuana,,those savings will be a constant figure for states to help them decide whether to continue wasting tax dollars or start making some while stopping some of the cash flow to criminals..
The prices in the rec stores are coming down enough to provide meaningful competition with the black market. Not quite there yet, but getting closer. Some growers are beginning to feel the pinch. I have a lot of friends who stayed with the black market, even through medical here. The biggest black market grower I know (or have known for a long time)was complaining to me just a week or so ago, he was having a hard time selling his product. When that guy speaks about pot and the market, his words reverberate. He WAS cannabis in this state during the eighties and early nineties, a huge grower of product. If the pinch has reached him, there’s a significant penetration of legal pot into the black market. I feel for the guy (and all the medical growers who had made their livling in MMJ), but that is a sure sign legalization is working.
Meanwhile,
WA legislators are attempting to end the dispensaries and force MMJ patients into the retail stores with their currently overpriced product and to have to pay a 37% excise tax on it. And they are STILL preventing social use or using in public (yet alcohol users get to socialize while imbibing and even to consume in public), sharing even among families (alcohol users can share their drinks), and growing your own to save money and assure yourself the product is organic and mold free (alcohol users are allowed to make their own wine and beer).
An urban farmer owning a piece of land located near Boston’s Logan Airport is actually making money growing regular farm produce such as lettuce in modified, climate-controlled shipping containers.
This type of urban farming can be applied to marijuana production, thereby reducing or eliminating many complications associated with growing the product in the open, while possibly reducing product production costs as well. If it works for lettuce….
With $600-million worth of hemp imported into the US annually, another cannabis product to keep one’s eye on is hemp and hempcrete. Hempcrete is a topic being featured in the NY Times:
Has marijuana cultivation provided a greater incentive for urban farming in general? If marijuana cultivators branch out into other farm products, the answer may turn out to be yes.
So many products and alternatives to the foreign fossil fools plastic and polyfiber clothing or cotton’s 90 million pounds of Monsanto poisons. American jobs replacing the outsourced textile mills now unemployed.
Food, Fuel, Fiber and FARMaceuticals.
Too versatile, no wonder its illegal.
High on Hemp
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1659
Hemplastic or Fossil Fools Crud
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/819
Isochanvre, a rediscovered French building material made from hemp hurds mixed with lime, actually petrifies into a mineral state and lasts for many centuries. Archeologists have found a bridge in the south of France, from the Merovingian period (500-751 C.E.), built with this process.
Building Materials & Housing
Practical, inexpensive fire-resistant construction material, with excellent thermal and sound-insulating qualities, is made by heating and compressing plant fibers to create strong construction paneling, replacing dry wall and plywood. William B. Conde of Conde’s Redwood Lumber, Inc., near Eugene, OR, in conjunction with Washington State University (1991-1993), has demonstrated the superior strength, flexibility, and economy of hemp composite building materials compared to wood fiber.
Shipping Container Home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoW-6QYkIR8
Sustainable Solutions through Shipping Containers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z34pqFJLqCQ
Cannabis farm in shipping container
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2G4jLFo0zI
So, the cheech and chong movie wasn’t making that up. How long until someone makes a car body out of this?
The World’s Most Eco-Friendly Car: It’s Made Entirely From HEMP
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/02/25/henry-ford-hemp-plastic-car-stronger/
Apparently this idea is as new as the Model T.
Ford did that first, though his also included other vegetative matter (souther slash pine fiber, straw, and ramie, in addition to the hemp).
I remember reading an article about someone learning how to grow in shipment containers in warehouses in flint before moving onto some major job in another state, so this is nothing too new!
I live in New Mexico and have a friend/grower who moved to CO a few years ago in anticipation of their legalization. He was feeling the effects of competition maybe a year ago, (sez he).
Another benefit to lower prices; This will accelerate the move to legal supply. As this happens, we will get a much clearer understanding of the size of the total market, not just guesses like we have had. Once the true size of the Colorado or Washington market is known, it will be much easier to convince those in other jurisdictions of the size of their market. Market size dictates taxes etc. so the more accuracy the better, and the sooner the better for convincing purposes.
So off topic that I expect Pete will remove this post. But this is what happens when you run a scene from “Fear and Loathing” through the “Deep Dream” google image recognition program. You get a machine that hallucinates FOR you.
Man, you HAVE to watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=33&v=oyxSerkkP4o
If only HST had lived I think he would have approved.
I don’t think HST is ever off topic, or on.
“I have always loved marijuana. It has been a source of joy and comfort to me for many years. And I still think of it as a basic staple of life, along with beer and ice and grapefruits – and millions of Americans agree with me.”
~ Hunter S Thompson: in his own words
Similar to an acid trip I had in my youth where everyone kind of looked like an insect, but without benefit of groovy soundtrack. But I always thought Flea looked like a dog.
“I’ve never been able to fully explain myself in this climate”.
In ALL the times I’ve done acid or “shrooms, I’ve never experienced hallucinations like that, seeing colors not normally see, and tracers and even seeing the molecules in the air, but never actual changes of the faces and other objects around me, nope.
The competition is improving, but only really in Denver. In the rest of the state, there are usually only a couple of town/county sanctioned stores and they are still $60/8ths.
I live in Larimer county, and we have only 2 stores for the entire area. They are both in Ft. Collins, but technically not in city limits (because the city banned retail stores). Both these stores are only allowed by the county, and because of that, they have a monopoly on the area and will never have lowered prices. It’s still very much cheaper to buy black market, which is they whole reason I thought we legalized.
I could go on and on about the problems here in Colorado. While it’s far from perfect, at least it’s going in the right direction.
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What in the world could lead you to believe that the sole reason for cannabis law reform was to vex the black market vendors? I thought that we were promoting liberty, self ownership and equal protection of the law.
If we only examine the people who have decided to take advantage of the home cultivation part of A-64, that cohort most assuredly takes a bite out of gross revenues of the black market vendors. The black marketeers don’t have to end up begging on the streets of Bombay for A-64 to have had a positive social impact.
These things just don’t happen overnight. It’s a process, not an incantation. Also please remember that there are black markets and then there are really black markets.
In Georgia USA, there are still a few vestigial bootleggers of drinking alcohol. In that State modern day bootlegging leads to the scourge of stripper poles and the tragedy of illegal buffets:
I have it broken into two illegal markets,,the green market which is grown locally and the profits from it are spent locally,,improving our economy instead of another country’s.
And the black market,,smuggled in or grown locally and profits are spent outside of our economy.
OT: How can something be called Health Provider and then kill a patient by denying an organ transplant? How sick is this society to let it happen? Thanks Jer, but seriously, this law takes effect January 1, 2016. I mean is he saying people have to die until then? Actually I think it defines the prohibitionists as subhuman, to brainstorm such a notion of denial in the first place. Or to carry out the orders. For being on a list to relieve suffering they are assassinated, by the doctors. How sick is that?
California: Governor Signs Law Expanding Medical Marijuana Patients’ Rights
The Heartlessness of Dying for Prohibition
The tragic fate of Norman B. Smith is all you need to know about to see how senseless it is to make consumption of marijuana a crime.
Insurance Companies Start Noticing the Legal Cannabis Industry
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The part that really drives me nutz is how the prohibitionists seem to believe that all cannabis is fungible.
I can go to the liquor store and by a fifth of 80 proof rotgut for less than $10. I can also find nightclubs that cater to people with more dollars than sense where the price of a bottle of champagne costs more that the median annual household income in America.
I’m not including “collector” booze where there are only a small number of units to be bought (usually at auction) and no more will ever be produced.
Neither am I including brand name products where almost the entire cost of the product is in the packaging. Those producers are really just selling the sizzle instead of the steak. E.g. A bottle of Tequila La Ley del Diamante will set you back a cool $3.5 million. But you can likely recover a significant part of that price by reselling the diamonds used to decorate the bottle. If you click the link above there’s a slide show of the 10 most absurdly priced drinking alcohol available at retail establishments.
More of this please! A welcome dose of sanity for my insane day.
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Alright boys and girls, it’s time for the next lesson of “How to Lie with Statistics” while simultaneously causing Darrell Huff blush with envy.
Here’s the lie:
Now here are the statistics:
That’s a just barely more than a 1/2 of 1 percent increase. Why aren’t those people ashamed that they’re making mountains out of molehills?
I have not been able to document the odd claim in the article linked which utilizes a refrigerator as a standardized unit of measure. I want to know how many cubic feet of shelf space in those refrigerators? Were they Energy Stars? How old were the refrigerators? Were the refrigerators located in Phoenix AZ or Juneau AK? Do the old fashioned iceboxes
It isn’t just refrigerators that they’ve conflated with a standardized unit of measure. What the heck would lead anyone to conclude that a “plant of marijuana” is a unit of measure? I wish that I had pictures of grow done by a friend of mine back in the late ’90s. This guy used a desktop computer tower for a “stealth” grow. He actually did keep 3 plants rotating out of that micro-grow.
Can you imagine any other successful new industry, registering an up-tick in power usage of one half of one percent, being treated as “complicating†by local officials? This just illustrates the longevity of prohibitionist propaganda and scapegoating. Unfortunately some of this manure still sticks in the minds of the media-poor.
If only there was a way to grow plants without artificial light…
And the beat goes on:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/15-people-rotting-prison-life-drug-crimes-didnt-hurt-anybody
New research indicates that for some people, reaching the drinking age of 21 has an immediate effect on their underage (18-to-21) consumption of Vitamin M:
By implication, we have another piece of evidence indicating the illegality of marijuana makes it more available to those under 21, not less.
Link here.
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What should we do if we think that people should just mind their own damn business?
How about mandatory lobotomies for prohibitionists abusing the process of law? No wait, that wouldn’t change anything…never mind.
I think that by now it should be obvious to everyone that cannabis is far less harmful to one’s health than alcohol.
115 Years of Marijuana Coverage
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread28620.shtml
Antique Corn Remedies
http://antiquecannabisbook.com/chap6/CornMed.htm
Evidence of Marijuana’s Medical Usefulness Mounts
http://tinyurl.com/qa8s4un
Here is another study:
Marijuana users substitute alcohol at 21
http://tinyurl.com/pjn6v7z
Crost and Santiago Guerrero used five years of data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
“We need to take this possible substitution behavior into account,” Crost said. “Marginally lowering the minimum legal drinking age would decrease the probability of marijuana consumption in young adults by about 10 percent. So, policies aimed at restricting alcohol consumption among young adults are likely to have the unintended consequence of increasing the use of illegal drugs, such as marijuana.
“If you think alcohol is much more harmful to people’s health, then you should probably restrict alcohol use. If you think marijuana is more harmful, then you might want to consider loosening the restrictions for alcohol,” he said. –
“If you think alcohol is much more harmful to people’s health, then you should probably restrict alcohol use. If you think marijuana is more harmful, then you might want to consider loosening the restrictions for alcohol,” he said.
DOJ speaks with forked tongue,,,,again.
Raiding the tribal grows in Northern CA right now,,this will turn into a real mess if they attempt to seize tribal lands,,,two tribes so far.
http://tinyurl.com/ob4weln
ALTURAS, Calif. (AP) — Federal agents have seized at least 12,000 marijuana plants from land in far Northern California that belongs to two federally recognized Indian tribes, the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento said.
The plants and over 100 pounds of processed pot were found on Tuesday while the agents were carrying out search warrants for the properties governed by the Alturas Indian Rancheria and Pit River tribes in Modoc County, Lauren Horwood, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner, said.
An application in support of the search signed by an agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs alleges that the chairman and vice-chairman of the Alturas Rancheria, a tiny tribe with just five members and 20 acres of land, told Modoc County’s sheriff in March that they planned to start growing medical marijuana near a casino the tribe operates. Pot is only legal for medical purposes in California. ‘Snip”
I expect the DEA to try and seize the lands,,only 20 tribal members,,the govt could not force the NA’s to sell their tribal lands so they will steal them. IMO
Horwood said no federal charges are pending, and nothing was taken other than cannabis and items of evidentiary value.
She said the operation violated local regulations by the amount cultivated.
This all makes it sound to me like a slash-and-run smackdown, in which federal agents are transparently enforcing local ordinances backed by the threat–but not the promise–of federal prosecution.
That, to me, is more disturbing than the fact that this happened on Indian land.
There are no limits under state laws in CA. SB420 does not trump prop 215 making it a federal case. Weasels try anything. Last raids were for so called environmental protection. So they will raid them of their crop and probably not arrest anyone unless they defend themselves.
Not the first for Indians.
The Ganjawar Comes to the The Rez
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/388
SB 420 Establishes Prop. 215 Guidelines,
Voluntary Patient Identification Card System
http://www.canorml.org/laws/sb420.html
Strictly speaking, the guidelines do not constitute hard and fast limits on how much patients may legally have. This is because Prop. 215 specifically allows patients whatever amount of marijuana they need for their own medical use, and Prop. 215 cannot be overridden by the legislature. Rather, the guidelines are supposed to protect patients from arrest, something that is nowhere guaranteed in Prop. 215 itself. Therefore, even though patients who exceed the limits are subject to arrest, they should still be able to defend themselves in court under Prop. 215.
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One of, if not the most annoying things that I learned during 2014 was that Colorado had never kept a specific count of the number of arrests/dispositions of cases of DUIs for cannabis. It doesn’t help that Colorado State Patrol has decided to do that starting in 2014. The absence of historical data gives the prohibitionist parasites and their sycophants a license to regurgitate hysterical rhetoric as they see fit with no way to contradict them using analytic data.
Just to enhance that annoyance, I’ve now learned that while Colorado Authorities can’t tell you the historical total of arrests for cannabis addled driving, they can provide detailed, definitive statistics for the number of animals that met an untimely demise on Colorado’s highways and byways. Detailed numbers for Statewide, each individual county, species and month by month.
Roadkill by Month 2014
Reported Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions by Type & County
Wild Animal Crashes 2004-2013
ot Did pope use coca leaves?
Inside Pope Francis’s South American Trip
via @katiecouric
UN: “make coca illegal” – Evo: “whatever!”
Coca, Bolivia, and Law 1008
Mama Coca wants Colombia’s fumigation to end.
MonsanToxic Drift: and the Drug War in Colombia
It’s official. The Pope asked for trimate, a tea brewed from coca, on the papal flight to Bolivia:
A story ran in the LA Weekly quoting the “Wyatt Earp of the DEAâ€, Mr. Hector Berrellez, who believes he’s cracked the murder case involving the torture and assassination of DEA agent Kiki Camerena.
Former DEA Special Agent Berrelez fingers none-other than Iran-Contra figure and former CIA agent Felix Rodriguez, based on eyewitness testimony to the torture and murder. In this rendition of the story, the “Cuban†being referred to by the witness, López, is Agent Rodriguez:
Herrara says the CIA left Camerena to die to stop him from exposing the Iran-Contra connection in which sales of cocaine within the US financed Contra rebels.
Mr. Felix Rodriguez denies the allegations.
The Iran-Contra Affair 25 Years On Youtubes and Pics
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1785
Donald Rumsfeld’s replacement, Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates, served as deputy CIA director while the illegal Iran-Contra operations were taking place. “I was trying to learn the ropes while all this was going on,”
Dirty Secret:
Drug Czar Walters and the Iran-Contra Connection
http://www.conspiracydigest.com/dirtysecrets.html
“When he went down to meet with Noriega, John Walters was the ‘special advisor.’ His father Vernon Walters got him the position. His father is very, very loyal to the Bush Cabal and had been for years. You don’t see Vern much anymore. Vernon Walters was one of the original post-war Military-Industrial Complexers.” A little family history — the father of John Walters is US Army Lieutenant General Vernon A. Walters, the deputy director of the CIA from 1972 to 1976 during the Nixon administration.
BUSH’S CONSERVATIVE APPOINTMENTS
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/Book5Ch.2.html
Walters simplistic hard line approach was to punish drug users — to incarcerate those convicted of crimes rather than to deal with the health aspect of the problem.
RMoney ties to El Salvadorian right wing death squads
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/sreply/417
Mitt Romney was looking for investor capital to start Bain Capital, he obtained pledges for $9 million, about 40% of his startup funds, from people that had ties to the right wing death squads of El Salvador of the 1980’s.
Joan Baez & Jackson Browne – El Salvador
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-tYinK-I1o
The human brain has a new atlas thanks to excellent work led by the Computational Neuroimaging Group and the Platform for Quantitative Biomedicine of the Biocruces Institute for Healthcare Research and the collaboration of the universities of the Basque Country, Granada, Bari (Italy), and Tel Aviv (Israel).
The new brain atlas maps the structural connectivity with the functional connectivity networks. Not only will this revolutionary tool probably allow for a better understanding of drug addictions, but we may finally be able to use it to discover what’s really wrong with the brains of prohibitionists.
A novel brain partition highlights the modular skeleton shared by structure and function, Ibai Diez, Paolo Bonifazi, Iñaki Escudero, Beatriz Mateos, Miguel A. Muñoz, Sebastiano Stramaglia & Jesus M. Cortes; Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 10532 doi:10.1038/srep10532, July 3, 2015.
endoCannabinoid Deficiency from 100 years of forced abstinence. Larger fear centers and dull minds. Forcing trust in the only possible salvation, Authoritah!
Are You Cannabis Deficient?
Abstinence is potentially risking Chronic endoCannabinoid Deficiency
After 12,000 years of use and then almost a century of cold turkey abstinence. Fear centers are growing. More dependance on authority to keep them safe. More blind obedience and serving without questions. Prohibitionism is the result.
The Prohibitionist’s Have Larger ‘Fear Centers’ in Their Brains
Scientists have begun speculating that the root cause of disease conditions such as migraines and irritable bowel syndrome is from C.E.D. It is well advised if anyone discovers these conditions among themselves, coworkers family or friends to immediately fire up a doober and get them treatment asap.
Endocannabinoids
Time to do away with employee drug testing