Something interesting happened to me last night. My neighbor came over and we got to talking about how we smoked pot when were teenagers. I asked him how much he paid for 1/8 ounce of pot and he said $20. He said he paid $40 for a 1/4 ounce and $100 for one whole ounce. It was funny because we lived in different states. I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and he grew up in Southern Minneapolis, MN. We grew up almost 2000 mile apart yet the marijuana economics were identical even without a public national media to communicate what the prices were in different states. Somehow the price is the same no matter where you are. How can this be?
Market forces, would be my guess.
Coupled with festivals like Grateful Dead concerts (or the String Cheese Incident, in more modern times), Bonaro, ect. there is a mingling of people interested in that sort of thing from all over the country so events like that roughly standardize the cost.
Throw on top of that the ‘relaxed’ culture normally associated with marijuana and it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that most small-scale dealers don’t take gross advantage of their clientele. Since there is normally an abundance of said small-time dealers, it follows that the exception that would try and violate these rules would be snuffed out due to competition.
Also, pot smoking is a fairly ritualized activity (bong right, piece left. Smoke the dealer up, ect.) and ritualized activities are normally fairly conservative when it comes to updating any aspect of the practice (up to and including price).
I don’t smoke very much pot, very occasional.
I have noticed this as well. It is the same price in idaho as it is in boston, even though the price of living is about 4 times as expensive in boston compared to idaho, yet pot prices are equal. hmmm. Come on social scientists and sociologists, whats goin on here?
Pot is a WEED that is actually hard to stop from growing once you plant it. Just like any weed.
Prohibition is the biggest scam I’ve ever seen. It’s like forking over fucking… 40 bucks for some dandelions.
Sorry man, I could care less. Weed makes me paranoid. I get your point, though.
Yeah, it’s a weed- but that doesn’t mean cultivating it isn’t a valuable service. My pothead friends have always told me that “ditchweed,” or wild growing pot, is often horrible. Perhaps weed needs a little TLC to make it grow properly potty.
Yes, Phaedrus, that is true. That’s a good point – it is a science. At the same time though, while that’s all fine and dandy… it’s still like forkin over cash for some Dandies.
Prohibition is a scam, that is my point. It funnels the public money, untracable and unaccountable into politicians hands and different private black ops projects.
I agree completely- prohibition is a scam, a puritanical society vestigal appendage as useless to us as a tail or webbed feet. The War on Drugs has created far more social problems than the ones it seeks to destroy.
The college town I live in loosened the punishment for carrying pot last year, to a small fine rather than arrest and sentencing. Interestingly enough, despite what I was force-fed about Capitalist markets, the price did not drop.
I live on the east coast and went to school on the west coast, and I’ve got to say I disagree with the premise. The pot that I would buy out west would have cost me twice as much in the northeast. In Cali, you’ve got a pipeline from western Canada and Mexico keeping prices down. But it’s got to travel farther to get to Boston, and that was reflected in the cost. So I don’t see anything to explain.
I’ll try to explain this and still show that they’re is some universal mechanism at work.
First, the price along the east coast is the same, correct? Second, the fact that it’s cheaper in California suggests, if it’s true, that a tax has been added for shipment costs outside of the state. The price remains static once outside of California. There is still a universal price.
I guess this supports Xunzian’s guess, then. The more it costs to get it where it needs to go, the more it costs to buy. Production costs are similar across the board, so where it costs more than a certain amount to import, local growers stand to make a great deal, which keeps the amount people can charge to a minimum, levelling out the prices.
Nihilistic, I would guess that selling pot still carried enough of a penelty that it kept prices high, even though penelties for possession decreased.
I think this may be true, but what keeps legalization from happening is that most people don’t care because they don’t smoke pot and others still believe pot is dangerous. What it takes to get the rest of us to change our minds is incentive. We have none. If pot were legal tomorrow, I would get no satisfaction.
If pot was legalized tomorrow I still wouldn’t smoke it. Marijuana has been the victim off a long concerted smear compaign by the federal government. Most of the current attitudes concerning illegal drugs are based upon complete falsehoods that have been repeated for so long that they’re no longer questioned. Is the average citizen in favor of legalization? Probably not. But they may be if they examined the issue based on facts rather than government propaganda.
There’s no incentive for us to do that.
Obviously, if by “incentive” you mean “a means to force them to tell the truth.” The government is quite happy with the status quo, be it the Iraq situation, the War of Terror, the Patriot Act, etc etc.
I mean incentive for people like me who don’t smoke pot to care whether it’s legal or not. How will it give me any satisfaction? My interpretation of what you’re saying is you want to take revenge on the government. You want to embarrass them, which is a good incentive if you hate them, but I don’t.
Legalizing pot would be good for the economy. Cigarette companies already hold copyrights on what they would name their product if it were ever legalized. Given how high sin taxes are, pot tax would actually help fund a lot of public works!
Legalizing pot would greatly help (if not outright solve) the prison overcrowding problem.
Legalizing pot would force the legal structure to go after people selling (and consuming. Ideally more the selling, but we’ve seen how it works with pot) actually dangerous drugs.
Legalizing pot would offer a legal alternative to alcohol. I’ve never heard of a pothead coming home and beating his wife – and this is coming from a drunk who doesn’t smoke pot anymore.
Legalizing pot would actually block most of the gateway effect that it has. Anti-drug education is an absolute joke because it teaches that all drugs are pretty much equally bad (including alcohol). Once you start drinking, well, that wasn’t as bad as the class said . . . so smoking pot justifies itself on those grounds. Well, that wasn’t so bad . . . and then you can get into a realm of drugs where they can actually mess you up pretty damned good.
However, if pot were legal and the education system were shifted towards a more realistic idea as opposed to abstinence only until you are 21 and it becomes magically OK, I think that it would make people less inclined to seek out other drugs.
This sounds amazing, but if this were all true wouldn’t we have legalized it already? And if it is true, then why aren’t more people getting behind it?
there is no drinking age in sweden. And there is less alcohol abuse than in teh united states that does have an age limit? Why? Any speculation.