California:
High Quality: $359.19 / oz. (n=72)
Medium Quality: $300 / oz. (n=17)
Low Quality: $648 / oz. (n=2) <-- ???
The low quality stuff is worth more than twice as much as the medium? The crazy numbers for low quality are on account of one wonky data point ($976/oz). There were also some obviously bunk ones like $1/oz, which someone probably did pay from a friend, but that doesn't reflect street value.
It's hard to do this in an automated fashion, though, at least until you have a good amount of data. A good place to start would be automatically flagging figures more than 2 standard deviations from the (local) mean, and hand-curating those. Keep track of "bad" data points, and as you find patterns you can add filters.
The price for the High Quality doesn't make much sense either even with tons of data points. According to Yelp the most expensive dispensary in SF is Divinity Tree, and I think their onces are $360. Considering that basically everywhere else in the state should be cheaper than this I don't see how the average could possibly be 360.
Not everyone can get licenses to purchase from dispensaries, so a dispensary's price is not necessarily market price. Theres still a "black" market so to speak; of people who buy it illegally.
Not entirely true. If I can't get a license, I have to buy off the black market; meaning I have to go through dealers who traffic under the risk of arrest and prosecution. That creates the premium price that drugs have today, everywhere. Thus it makes sense for a drug dealer to charge more than the price available legally, because buyers without licenses have no choice.
However, there are also demand and supply side things going on that we might not know about that is affecting the price.
Yeah, but you have to look at the big picture. Not everyone has friends with licenses. Your still doing a favor for a friend and breaking the law, meaning you deserve a premium on the resale (not that you'd take anything from a friend).
In California illegal weed is cheaper than legal weed. That's just an empirical fact. It doesn't matter if you think it shouldn't be this way, that's just how it is.
I think one problem you will run into is that you are attempting to compare prices while also keeping fuzzy distinctions like quality. Alabama has cheaper "high quality" weed than California? That tells me that what would sell for $400/oz in CA is not available at any price in AL.
If you cut out the user-supplied quality metric or figure out some way to try to normalize this across the samples (e.g. ask submitters if they have purchased in other states and how they would rank this purchase against that past purchase) you would probably get better useful data.
Indeed, quality is highly subjective and relative to product available on the market. I have a personal hypothesis that most average smokers can't distinguish high quality vs medium quality.
I'm not sure how practical it is to get users to try and compare product quality from different locations; the sample size would probably be very low because most people buy and consume where they live.
True. I was mostly suggesting that you should drop the quality distinction but trying to leave you an out in case there was some clever way to normalize this. I think that in general people would find an accurate average more useful because then they could perform any quality discounting on their own using the known basepoint.
I actually think there could be some objective quality measures, but you would need someone with a fair range of experience to judge. Perhaps number of buds per ounce in the mix or a simple color/image chart to select from?
The problem with compiling an overall $/oz. amount is that, generally, prices go down as quantity goes up. The data will be skewed if a lot of people are reporting $50 eighths (400/oz.) and the price for an ounce from the same dealer is, say, $300. Maybe track the different amounts separately?
Exactly, we aren't incorporating the volume discount when we scale up smaller quantities of weed. This is because we really just don't know what the average margins of sales between different quantities.
We could display the averages in each quantity, but it would lack enough sample size. Plus having one nice round number is easier to visualize. I think the final .oz average probably within +/-10% accuracy.
publishing the standard deviation on the normalized price would go a long way towards making the numbers more useful. If you get enough samples you can do a simple fit to attempt to quantify the discount rate.
I only ever buy a single gram, but can't put that in. Also what if vendors start putting prices they pay growers, and dispensaries enter prices from vendors, and customers use prices from dispensaries... The same batch of herb will be many different prices, possibly need some way to distinguish a "type" of price that is being entered. That would make the data more valuable also for dispensaries shopping around different vendors, etc. Of course that is sticking to the "legal" weed market.
I know very little about the price of weed, but I think some of the data has to be bogus: $1000 for 5 grams in Palo Alto? When I lived there all my neighbors had their "ten plants" growing in their back yards, nobody I knew who smoked ever _paid_ for weed.
Why are you anti-marijuana? Are you anti-beer and anti-coffee too, and if not I'd be curious to hear your reasoning! Also, out of interest, where are you from?
Not sure just how far I want to get into this, because most of my points are admittedly indefensible and most of it just stems from a long hatred of smoking.
I was anti-beer for a very, very long time as well (until virtually six months ago), though coffee has always been my vice.
I'm Irish, and I'm fairly young (approaching twenty soon, which puts me very far in the minority on these matters. ;))
Mostly, I simply don't see the point. I understand the need to socialise and the like, and the need for friends. However, I think that if I make friends when I'm in a different state of mind to my ordinary, day-to-day thinking, then are they really my friends?
Furthermore, I don't like having a crutch. I don't think anybody truly needs to get drunk/high/drink a pot of coffee in the morning to get them through the day. If you do, you've probably made some bad decisions and you should think long and hard about where you're going in life.
I also simply hate the stoner mentality. Why the hell would you want to just coast through life? I mean, make something of yourself! Make your parents proud!
I know, however, that I'm painting a large number of people with the same brush here. I know that many of the people who smoke weed sometimes aren't stoners. I have almost no problems with people who smoke weed every once in a while, just as I don't have problems with people who go to the pub sometimes or with people who drink the odd coffee. I do sincerely have problems with people who smoke pot every other night, or every time they hang out with people, or every time they get even a little stressed. (Medical marijuana doesn't count, though, provided naturally that it's actually necessary. I'm not going to judge people when they're in huge amounts of pain.)
The thing is, though, that past this little speech, I can barely defend my arguments. It's not that I just don't get it (though that's definitely a factor), it's also that I simply have an irrational hatred of smoking.
The thing I like most about your post is that you never advocate locking human beings in a cage for smoking vegetation. You are "anti-marijuana" in the sense that it does not fit your vision of an ideal life, and that's all fine and good. I could argue similarly against eating too much fried food.
When people drag in the use of force, that's when discussions like this turn venomous. Using force to "protect people from themselves" only serves to erode people's awareness and sense of responsibility for their own choices, not to mention fostering violent organized crime.
Hey, thanks for replying! I'm a pro-marijuana person but I'm not going to attack your arguments at all, I was curious to hear your reasons, thanks for speaking up.
It's refreshing to see that people won't just immediately attack me for the opinion. It's such an uncommon view here, especially in my age group, that I get a lot of flack for it.
There are plenty of people who smoke weed and hardly coast through life. Successful (including VERY sucessful) CEOs, actors, inventors, scientists, pretty much all sorts of people invalidate that notion
It sounds like you, personally, dont mix well with some substances. Or maybe just don't have any experience with them from which you can make a reasoned judgement. It reminds me of my brother, who is anti-everything until he actually experiences it.
People don't have to smoke cannabis, you know - it can also be ingested through food which nullifies the smoking complaint.
its a way to pass time with friends, same reason why friends go and drink together, people smoke together... not to mention it can be safer and cheaper then booze.
I also simply hate the stoner mentality. Why the hell would you want to just coast through life? I mean, make something of yourself! Make your parents proud!
Why? What's the point? We're all going to die anyway.
"I have almost no problems with people who smoke weed every once in a while, just as I don't have problems with people who go to the pub sometimes or with people who drink the odd coffee. I do sincerely have problems with people who smoke pot every other night, or every time they hang out with people, or every time they get even a little stressed."
But why do you have problems with that? It appears to me as if have problems with other people who don't fit into your personal view of how one should lead its life. Or is this the only thing?
I personally can completely understand that you don't see the added value for yourself, but I don't get the part where you have an irrational hatred of smoking. It seems like you want to restrict others the choice of leading their lives the way they see fit, without harming others.
Do you have this irrational hatred in other areas too? What do you think about lazy people, for example? Or people who have other religious views than yourself?
> Do you have this irrational hatred in other areas too?
Yes. I don't like tattoos (though I love art in general). Don't like piercings either. Can't complain about lazy people (unless it severely impacts me), and I'm perfectly happy with religious people, as long as they don't try to push their views on me. I'm sure I have a bunch more of these things, my ex-girlfriend would probably be very happy to remind me of them.
I'm not about to restrict anybody to do anything. I certainly used to be much worse about this sort of thing (to the point where I didn't speak to my father for about a year until he stopped smoking (that was quite a few years ago now, I think I was ten or eleven)), but since college and since meeting a bunch of new friends with better outlooks on life, I've tried to simply live a drama-free life. One in which I create no hassle for myself or for others, which includes not openly criticising people for their choices like I used to.
However, I won't enter into a relationship with a smoker (even a little bit once a month), heavy drinker, and I'd think long and hard about someone with tattoos. Couldn't really tell you why. Not much of an issue these days either. Game development is such a woman-friendly career choice. ;)
Not sure if I answered your questions there, just typing as I think. :)
Interesting, we agree on all this just about word-for-word. Scary really.
I've tried to figure out why this is with me, the closest I've come to it is that I think that humans are pretty good the way they are, no need to poison them or modify them.
I wear no jewelery of any kind, not even a watch and never will, same with you ?
Rather than rebutting your rather strong feelings towards smokers, would you mind talking about your feelings about the push for legalization? Part of the sigma attached to cannabis smoking is directly linked to its "illegal" nature and misinformation spread by the highest parts of our government and media.
Take the DEA controlled substance scheduling which places cannabis as a schedule 1 drug:
(1) Schedule I.—
(A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
(B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
(C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision."
Science can and has refuted all 3 points, yet we're still having debate over the extreme dangers of legalization. Clearly something is irrational here as well when a plant that has not directly killed a single human being or cause violent withdrawal symptoms sits at a higher schedule than opium, cocaine, PCP and benzodiazepines. Even the synthetic THC pharma drug Marinol (Schedule III) can cause death at very high doses.
So long story short... are you behind maintaining status quo hypocrisy purely because of personal reasons?
You mean the burnt state, the smoke, or the herb itself? It's not true, it smells like a nice floral plant in its natural state. 'disgusting' is an opinion, anyhow. Millions and millions of people disagree with you.
Oh yeah, I should mention I posted this on HN a little more than a week ago. Combined with Reddit, you guys helped us get close to 500 entries in a couple days.
With the data and suggestions, we were able to map it out on googlemaps. We added metric units (grams), manual location selection, and region pages. Thanks HN!
Could you add an option to choose which quantity you want to see prices in? Seeing x$/gram next to y$/ounce doesn't really help much. Doing the conversion to a user-selectable base unit for all entries on one screen shouldn't be hard (I know that it would be distorted because of quantity discounts, maybe you can add an option to only show entries within a certain quantity bracket).
Plus, the heatmap request above would be nice.
Thirdly, the page says that there were entries in my area (in Europe) but the map doesn't show any.
Also, if you're soliciting feature suggestions ;) , as you get more data over time it would be nice to be able to view price evolution, and on a micro scale maybe even relate it to market events like a big plantation bust. It would be really cool if you could deduce hard numbers on price elasticity, using the normalized amount of entries over a time period as a proxy for supply.
Also you don't seem to track 'legal' vs 'illegal' sales? They're two very different markets I think, but maybe they do overlap. Does anyone know of any research on this? It seems like a very novel field, considering that the emergence of legal medical marijuana use in the US is a recent development.
Maybe (I'll stop suggesting after this ;) ) you can also track a difference between 'place bought' and 'place consumed' or 'place of residence'. It would be interesting to graph cross-border drug tourism patterns in Western Europe.
I visited my home country after 2 years and it has gotten better. You can actually rent out a nice room in an innocuous house. You can order your choice of movies and music. For $10, you can get weed that will last 2 for a month.
pot tourism is not what Nepal needs, man. Years ago it was old men and misfits that smoked charas; now you have kids learning the tricks from tourists :-/
It'd be really interesting to see this break down by "legal" vs "illegal" purchases. For instance, in Colorado (where "medical" marijuana is widely available for whoever wants it) is it cheaper or more expensive with a card?
Importing from Canadian grow ops is probably the name of the game along border states. Retail price is ~$200/oz in Ontario vs ~$400/oz in New York.
Oddly enough however, British Columbia and Washington state have similar prices. WSH either has much more lax laws, or is being flooded by BC production? Wonder whats going on there...
Strangely, it's the availability of beasters in Vancouver coupled with the absolute dominance of Vietnamese immigrant grow-ops in PacNW[1] (Portland and Seattle) that have contributed to the downward pricing pressure, not so much the laws (as, TX weed is abundant and cheap but _DO NOT_ get caught with weed in TX).
We have lots of national parks forests in Washington, and BC is very similar terrain. I have a feeling pot is grown on both sides of the border. (I know lots of pot is grown within the state: see pot siezed near twisp,yakima,etc.).And Im sure lots of pot is probably smuggled across the olympic peninsula. So more than likely, pot is just very easily attainable on both sides of the border, equalizing prices.
An ounce is ~28.3 grams, and an eighth is ~3.5 grams.
For the most part, the US Imperial units are just division units when it comes to marijuana sales, not actually measurements. When it's sold, it is more commonly weighed using the metric scale than imperial units inside the United States.
Not much of a nitpick, IMO. It's a pretty big oversight.
Curiosity: does any easy color-cycling software for monitors exist for color-blind people? It seems this could be solved by just rotating the color wheel until you can see the difference (even if the result is fugly).
That's a decent solution, and one of the nicer demos I've seen in quite a while. Having a floating window makes a fair bit of sense from a programming / UI standpoint.
Makes me want to make it system-wide, however. As useful as a floating window is, unless it has a way of supporting click-through (which is still guaranteed to be more cumbersome than not having a floating window), you still can't interact with things properly.
Hmmmm... you've given me yet another thing to add to my list of things to program. I think I'm thankful for that, though I'm definitely thankful for the link :)
Also, there's absolutely nothing about the site that encourages drug use at all. Implicitly or explicitly. Feel free to show me if you find something that does.
What does cleverness have to do with drugs? Many of the most brilliant people who have ever lived were drug users. Since this is HN, a good example is Steve Jobs. He credits LSD as one of the most important things he ever did.
1/4th gram will get you very high. Most people buy in 1/4th or 1/8th oz amounts. In comparison to alcohol, smoking marijuana is a very inexpensive way to have fun.
Depends on your tolerance and method of usage, but I use it 2-3 times a week, using a vaporiser, and go through ~0.1 grams a session. Due to taxes where I live (Victoria, Australia) it's cheaper than alcohol.
A couple of nugs might be typical. 1 oz is a lot of cannabis; it might take a year for a casual user to expend it. So no, your garden variety cannabis is not expensive and is comparably cheaper than alcohol, and much cheaper than pharmaceutical drugs.
My friend usually buys half an ounce to an ounce at a time, and it lasts him anywhere from a month (if there's not much to do but play video games and read) to six months. Cost ranges from $200 to $400, depending on quality.
Considering I regularly spend $50 per weekend on drinks, it's an incredibly cheap way to take a vacation from your mind.
I have an academic interest in drug trafficking patterns, but I don't know very much about the US situation; however isn't much of the US supply smuggled in over land from Mexico? That would make it quite logical for areas near borders to have high quality supply.
I haven't smoked in years because it doesn't agree with me anymore, but when I did, the stuff from Mexico tended to be lower quality. The good stuff was usually local and grown with care. Think industrial versus local produce.
112 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadIt's hard to do this in an automated fashion, though, at least until you have a good amount of data. A good place to start would be automatically flagging figures more than 2 standard deviations from the (local) mean, and hand-curating those. Keep track of "bad" data points, and as you find patterns you can add filters.
A lot of people have been pointing on the same thing you've been pointing out lol. That's why we added the n= for the time being.
However, there are also demand and supply side things going on that we might not know about that is affecting the price.
If you cut out the user-supplied quality metric or figure out some way to try to normalize this across the samples (e.g. ask submitters if they have purchased in other states and how they would rank this purchase against that past purchase) you would probably get better useful data.
I'm not sure how practical it is to get users to try and compare product quality from different locations; the sample size would probably be very low because most people buy and consume where they live.
We could display the averages in each quantity, but it would lack enough sample size. Plus having one nice round number is easier to visualize. I think the final .oz average probably within +/-10% accuracy.
EDIT: ... don't be mad at me, be mad at your dealer.
I was anti-beer for a very, very long time as well (until virtually six months ago), though coffee has always been my vice.
I'm Irish, and I'm fairly young (approaching twenty soon, which puts me very far in the minority on these matters. ;))
Mostly, I simply don't see the point. I understand the need to socialise and the like, and the need for friends. However, I think that if I make friends when I'm in a different state of mind to my ordinary, day-to-day thinking, then are they really my friends?
Furthermore, I don't like having a crutch. I don't think anybody truly needs to get drunk/high/drink a pot of coffee in the morning to get them through the day. If you do, you've probably made some bad decisions and you should think long and hard about where you're going in life.
I also simply hate the stoner mentality. Why the hell would you want to just coast through life? I mean, make something of yourself! Make your parents proud!
I know, however, that I'm painting a large number of people with the same brush here. I know that many of the people who smoke weed sometimes aren't stoners. I have almost no problems with people who smoke weed every once in a while, just as I don't have problems with people who go to the pub sometimes or with people who drink the odd coffee. I do sincerely have problems with people who smoke pot every other night, or every time they hang out with people, or every time they get even a little stressed. (Medical marijuana doesn't count, though, provided naturally that it's actually necessary. I'm not going to judge people when they're in huge amounts of pain.)
The thing is, though, that past this little speech, I can barely defend my arguments. It's not that I just don't get it (though that's definitely a factor), it's also that I simply have an irrational hatred of smoking.
Go easy on me in your rebuttal, I'm only meek. :)
When people drag in the use of force, that's when discussions like this turn venomous. Using force to "protect people from themselves" only serves to erode people's awareness and sense of responsibility for their own choices, not to mention fostering violent organized crime.
It's refreshing to see that people won't just immediately attack me for the opinion. It's such an uncommon view here, especially in my age group, that I get a lot of flack for it.
It sounds like you, personally, dont mix well with some substances. Or maybe just don't have any experience with them from which you can make a reasoned judgement. It reminds me of my brother, who is anti-everything until he actually experiences it.
People don't have to smoke cannabis, you know - it can also be ingested through food which nullifies the smoking complaint.
But why do you have problems with that? It appears to me as if have problems with other people who don't fit into your personal view of how one should lead its life. Or is this the only thing?
I personally can completely understand that you don't see the added value for yourself, but I don't get the part where you have an irrational hatred of smoking. It seems like you want to restrict others the choice of leading their lives the way they see fit, without harming others.
Do you have this irrational hatred in other areas too? What do you think about lazy people, for example? Or people who have other religious views than yourself?
The same is not true for smokers. Smoking <anything> is anti social.
It's useless trying to argue with addicts though. Just surprising there's so many drug users on HN. Sad.
Yes. I don't like tattoos (though I love art in general). Don't like piercings either. Can't complain about lazy people (unless it severely impacts me), and I'm perfectly happy with religious people, as long as they don't try to push their views on me. I'm sure I have a bunch more of these things, my ex-girlfriend would probably be very happy to remind me of them.
I'm not about to restrict anybody to do anything. I certainly used to be much worse about this sort of thing (to the point where I didn't speak to my father for about a year until he stopped smoking (that was quite a few years ago now, I think I was ten or eleven)), but since college and since meeting a bunch of new friends with better outlooks on life, I've tried to simply live a drama-free life. One in which I create no hassle for myself or for others, which includes not openly criticising people for their choices like I used to.
However, I won't enter into a relationship with a smoker (even a little bit once a month), heavy drinker, and I'd think long and hard about someone with tattoos. Couldn't really tell you why. Not much of an issue these days either. Game development is such a woman-friendly career choice. ;)
Not sure if I answered your questions there, just typing as I think. :)
I've tried to figure out why this is with me, the closest I've come to it is that I think that humans are pretty good the way they are, no need to poison them or modify them.
I wear no jewelery of any kind, not even a watch and never will, same with you ?
Take the DEA controlled substance scheduling which places cannabis as a schedule 1 drug: (1) Schedule I.— (A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse. (B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. (C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision."
Science can and has refuted all 3 points, yet we're still having debate over the extreme dangers of legalization. Clearly something is irrational here as well when a plant that has not directly killed a single human being or cause violent withdrawal symptoms sits at a higher schedule than opium, cocaine, PCP and benzodiazepines. Even the synthetic THC pharma drug Marinol (Schedule III) can cause death at very high doses.
So long story short... are you behind maintaining status quo hypocrisy purely because of personal reasons?
With the data and suggestions, we were able to map it out on googlemaps. We added metric units (grams), manual location selection, and region pages. Thanks HN!
Plus, the heatmap request above would be nice.
Thirdly, the page says that there were entries in my area (in Europe) but the map doesn't show any.
Also you don't seem to track 'legal' vs 'illegal' sales? They're two very different markets I think, but maybe they do overlap. Does anyone know of any research on this? It seems like a very novel field, considering that the emergence of legal medical marijuana use in the US is a recent development.
Maybe (I'll stop suggesting after this ;) ) you can also track a difference between 'place bought' and 'place consumed' or 'place of residence'. It would be interesting to graph cross-border drug tourism patterns in Western Europe.
I visited my home country after 2 years and it has gotten better. You can actually rent out a nice room in an innocuous house. You can order your choice of movies and music. For $10, you can get weed that will last 2 for a month.
Come to Nepal man. Seriously.
I'd be really interested to see data from Europe (but hopefully that will take care of itself over time).
Oddly enough however, British Columbia and Washington state have similar prices. WSH either has much more lax laws, or is being flooded by BC production? Wonder whats going on there...
[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1662891...
Not exactly cheap, but makes sense if getting caught is costly.
For the most part, the US Imperial units are just division units when it comes to marijuana sales, not actually measurements. When it's sold, it is more commonly weighed using the metric scale than imperial units inside the United States.
(No, I'm not stoned. :-)
Curiosity: does any easy color-cycling software for monitors exist for color-blind people? It seems this could be solved by just rotating the color wheel until you can see the difference (even if the result is fugly).
They have a flash demo explaining what it does at http://www.colorhelper.com/tutorial.php
Makes me want to make it system-wide, however. As useful as a floating window is, unless it has a way of supporting click-through (which is still guaranteed to be more cumbersome than not having a floating window), you still can't interact with things properly.
Hmmmm... you've given me yet another thing to add to my list of things to program. I think I'm thankful for that, though I'm definitely thankful for the link :)
Also, there's absolutely nothing about the site that encourages drug use at all. Implicitly or explicitly. Feel free to show me if you find something that does.
It's a shame there seems to be such a big pothead culture in the US. Very odd how some really clever people choose to rot their brains with drugs.
Saying something was important isn't the same as saying it's beneficial or good. For example, some people often say the following:
That doesn't mean people should take that as advice.This seems like an incredibly expensive hobby.
It also appears that somebody is kindof spamming the site. The top three entires that came up when I loaded the page were $999 - 5 Grams - Scottsdale
"The Union" is a decent documentary about cannabis in general, including its distribution and pricing history: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9077214414651731007...
Considering I regularly spend $50 per weekend on drinks, it's an incredibly cheap way to take a vacation from your mind.
But then again, the people smoking shwag probably aren't reading hacker news and adding their cost of weed to an online database.
*And by fixed, I mean I'm watching over the database with a baseball bat until my programming partner gets home lol.