We Pay a Lot for Our Weed

Stéphane Bidouze/ Shutterstock

Website Flowing Data has put together a map of what marijuana costs across the country. The darker the map, the less the weed costs. We'd also like to think the darker areas of the map indicate where the stoners are also located. And you probably have to be stoned to live in Texas. Chicago's a beer town, which may help account for the higher prices of pot here.

Flowing Data used information from the website Price of Weed. Take the accuracy of these prices for what you will. But if the average prive for an ounce of high quality pot in Chicago is $480, less people are smoking up in the City of Big Shoulders than we thought. If you're willing to pick out stems and seeds, head to Oak Forest, where five grams averages $20. Or head up to Highland Park, where an eighth costs $40.

Spend the money you saved on a good pack of rolling papers.

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By Chuck Sudo in News on August 30, 2011 11:40 AM

Comments [rss]

BlueFairlane

I think there's some validity to the second map ... at least the relative expense on that map corresponds to what people who live in places I know have told me. It also corresponds to the logic of supply and demand. As twocee said above, marijuana grows like kudzu in the South, especially in the former tobacco belt. I knew a woman who would pull it from her garden as weeds. It does not grow well in the upper Midwest, though, or in other splotches of yellow on the map like the Mojave. Meanwhile, marijuana can't take advantage of the large scale distribution available in this age, so you're pretty limited in what can be shipped in. Supply in an Upper Midwest urban center like Chicago will be very low and probably dependent on what people can grow in basements or along Metra tracks, while demand is very high.

You have a few small splotches of yellow in places I wouldn't expect ... Mississippi, the area around Nashville and Knoxville, something that roughly corresponds to the Shenandoah Valley. My guess is this indicates areas of higher demand that exceeds the relative ease of production.

furytrader

It's Chicago - we pay a lot for, well, a lot of things.

Navin_Johnson

You can also take the L, bus, or a cab to your office, instead of hitchhiking to the coal mine with the wild and wonderful Whites. Trade offs...

archie_manning

Does anybody think this actually has some validity? A sample size of ten? From dealer to dealer, depending on what you are actually getting the price will fluctuate, even if they all fall in the "High Quality" wide generalization. I really doubt location has anything to do with it, unless we are talking about being closer to the source, or being in a state where dispensaries are available.

From what I have heard.

mickcube

i don't think you can really trust a crowdsourced site on the subject due to people's tendencies to perpetually know a dude who can give them friend prices on the best weed in the history of man, which is better and cheaper than the weed you get from the dude you know.

Jeff

Also, the people who get the very best stuff will undoubtedly "forget" to post the price they paid, which calls the numbers into question.

twocee

Speaking as a data geek, and general observer, I think the first map is completely inaccurate.

1 - Pot prices in Colorado have shot up astronomically since medicinal marijuana was legalized. What used to cost $40 now costs well over $100. However, Colorado is mostly dark green. This improves a bit with the second map.

2 -- Kentucky, which should be dark green in nearly every sector except for northern KY is exactly opposite. There is no possible way that pot costs more in the eastern Appalachian mountains than it does on a street corner in Covington. For one thing, you can find the stuff growing wild in your backyard in eastern Kentucky, not so much inside the I-275 belt in northern KY. Again, the second map is more on target.

3 -- anecdotal evidence would indicate an extremely high number of college age pot smokers in the Chicago/Chicagoland area - a demographic that is not going to pay $480 for an ounce of pot. So are they really just smoking stems?

As always when talking about the economics of pot, I am left wondering why the government doesn't legalize it and start taxing the hell out of it.

BlueFairlane

Damn hippie.

viachicago

"As always when talking about the economics of pot, I am left wondering
why the government doesn't legalize it and start taxing the hell out of
it."

Because that would entail admitting outright that we've wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars on a failed public policy for the past 50+ years. And we can't have that.