For most recreational marijuana consumers, the difference between a $60 top-shelf eighth and a $20 door-buster isn\u2019t the strain name. It isn\u2019t who grew it, the strain\u2019s genetic lineage, its terpene count, nor the THC number printed on the state-mandated label.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s much more fundamental than that. The crucial separating factor between the top-shelf and the ho-hum weed is exactly $40 \u2014 which is why in most situations, the cheaper cannabis is the more popular cannabis.<\/p>\n
Driving this point home, I recall an anecdote a northern California grower and dispensary operator once told me. He put the same strain into two different jars. One had the regular price. The other had a warning label \u2014 like a skull-and-crossbones \u2014and was half-off. The half-off \u201cdanger weed\u201d sold like crazy.<\/p>\n
All this to make the mind-numbingly obvious, intelligence-insulting observation that price matters significantly to marijuana consumers \u2014 and matters more so than most to the daily or near-daily users who account for close to 80 percent of total consumption.<\/p>\n
This means, generally speaking, legalization has been great for the marijuana consumer, who is currently enjoying solid product at a record-low price. (It has not been nearly as friendly to the marijuana\u00a0producer<\/em>, but that\u2019s a separate story and one not top on the list of priorities for a buyer.)<\/p>\n This buyer\u2019s market was legalization\u2019s grand promise,\u00a0as RAND Corporation marijuana researcher Beau Kilmer recently wrote<\/a>\u2014 and from the consumer\u2019s end, it\u2019s a promise that\u2019s been mostly fulfilled.<\/p>\n \u201cThe market price of cannabis plummets with legalization,\u201d Kilmer and Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University, observed.<\/p>\n \u201cHigh-potency illicit cannabis typically costs more than $10 per gram,\u201d they wrote. \u201cThe average legal-market prices in Washington and Colorado (after taxes) are now well below that, with highly potent but less fancy \u2018bargain bud\u2019 available, with quantity discounts, for less than $3 per gram.\u201d<\/p>\n And indeed, \u201c[p]rices are the lowest we have tracked,\u201d said Jonathan Rubin, CEO of cannabis sales-tracking firm Cannabis Benchmarks,\u00a0in an interview with Leafly News<\/a>\u00a0last year \u2014 and that was before the fall outdoor harvest came in.<\/p>\n The observations that legalization has led to a buyer-friendly bounty contradicts prevailing wisdom in other corners of the cannabis industry. Here,\u00a0experts declare<\/a>that unlicensed, illicit, or \u201cgray market\u201d companies are undercutting legal cannabis outlets by up to 50 percent by avoiding taxes, testing their product, or other cumbersome regulations.<\/p>\n This is true to a point: Avoiding regulation is absolutely a way to do business more cheaply \u2014 ask Uber or Airbnb about that \u2014 but operators dodging the law are also interested in profit. They require higher prices to compensate for the higher risk.<\/p>\n But as the experiment with the jars proves, not the intricacies of regulation nor how much the supplier paid in taxes matters much to the end user, who is concerned above all with cost-effectiveness.<\/p>\n What they will care about is the \u201crigorous competition\u201d required to keep end-user cannabis prices low, which has been lacking in some jurisdictions where regulations limit the number of retail outlets, restrict them so tightly few open, or ban them outright.<\/p>\n In instances like this \u2014 including a majority of jurisdictions in California, which have banned\u00a0dispensaries<\/a>\u00a0outright \u2014 there is no rigorous competition, and thus prices may be artificially inflated for inferior product.<\/p>\n Here, too, the illegal producer may find market share.\u00a0According to one estimate,<\/a>California\u2019s $3 billion worth of legal cannabis sales was only 20 to 25 percent of all marijuana purchases in the state. Whether dispensary bans or lax enforcement on illegal operators making open sales is more to blame depends on who you ask, but again, the clear winner who emerges here is the end consumer, who has a broad array of options from which to choose.<\/p>\n What\u2019s not clear is where, exactly, the floor is located. How cheap can cannabis be sold while still offering some measure of quality and reliability to the consumer, a living wage to the worker, profit to the entrepreneur, as well as some tax revenue for the lawmaker? Whatever the number is, it will change again when and if interstate commerce is legalized and one state\u2019s surplus can be sold in other markets. That may spell yet another round of woes to marijuana producers. But for the consumer, it will be yet\u00a0another discount jar \u2014 no warning label required.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, what is the price of an eighth where you live?<\/p>\n The post Marijuana Legalization Means a Buyer\u2019s Market<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
For most recreational marijuana consumers, the difference between a $60 top-shelf eighth and a $20 door-buster isn\u2019t the strain name. It isn\u2019t who grew it, the strain\u2019s genetic lineage, its terpene count, nor the THC number printed on the state-mandated label. It\u2019s much more fundamental than that. The crucial separatingContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,9128,170,687,356],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33739,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33738\/revisions\/33739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Marijuana Legalization Means a Buyer\u2019s Market<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"