(Summit Daily News) BOULDER — Boulder County Caregivers offers 16 glass jars of marijuana with names like Skinny Pineapple and Early Pearl Maui, priced at $375 to $420 an ounce. There are marijuana capsules and snacks made with cannabis butter, such as rice crispy treats.
Russian palladium today is trading at $250 – $262 per ounce. It is the softest of the platinum group metals and is used in things like catalytic converters, cell phones, and computers. It is a fairly rare material which must be laboriously mined underground. Somehow this valuable useful rare earth metal costs less for the men and machinery to dig up, smelt, process, pack, and ship overseas than the flowers of a locally-grown bush.
I can get a wholesale ounce of Spanish Saffron today for $89.95 wholesale, which sells for a suggested $129.95 retail. Saffron is the individual threads of the saffron flower which must be hand-picked. It grows mostly in Iran and Spain and each flower produces only three threads. It takes 75,000 flowers to produce a pound. Somehow, this valuable useful rare flower costs less for the men to harvest, handpick tiny threads from each individual flower, dry and vacuum pack, and ship overseas than the flowers of a locally-grown bush.
One of the rarest and most expensive cognacs in the world is France’s Remy Martin Cognac Black Pearl Louis XIII. It is made from a 100-year-old fruit brandy and aged in a single barrel that is several centuries old. It sells for $28,000 for a 1.75l bottle, or about $464 per ounce. Somehow, this valuable rare historical luxury liquor costs just a little more for the men to ferment, bottle, and ship overseas than the flowers of a locally-grown bush.
The total is expected to rise to 15,000 by year’s end, according to the state health department, which blames the rapid increase on patient confidentiality guarantees and federal plans to stop raiding medical marijuana operations, which the U.S. government considers illegal.
“Blames” the rapid increase? Shouldn’t that be “credits” the rapid increase? Why is it that when businesses have rapid growth, that’s “growing the economy”, and when government programs have rapid growth, that’s “serving the people”, but when medical marijuana patient rolls rise, that’s “abuse of the system”?
Since December, the average patient age in Colorado has dropped from 42 to 24, raising more questions about abuses.
Yeah, because younger people don’t get glaucoma, cancer, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, migraines, fibromyalgia, etc. Before the dispensaries, what point was there in registering? The older patient and the younger patient would both be growing their own or buying it on the black market. Older patients would be more likely to want to protect their possessions and family and be in better position to pay the fee to the state to be legal. If the average age is down, then it is just normalizing to where it should be without artificial barriers like being forced to buy in an illegal market.
Leigh’s waiting room could be found in a dentist’s office, save for coffee-table reading material that includes a copy of High Times and a Timothy Leary book. Spice jars feature samples of marijuana available for sale. All sales are by appointment only, and Leigh’s business collects about $10,000 in sales tax a month.
Leigh’s patients are mainly middle-aged women with multiple sclerosis and men coping with hepatitis C. One employee said he takes tincture drops to help prevent seizures. A customer, a jiujitsu coach, said he uses it to treat pain from four surgeries and regular fights.
Today Leigh, a self-described soccer and karate mom, has seven employees, offers health insurance and plans to add 401(k) benefits. She worries federal agents might raid her business, even though the Obama administration says the government will stop targeting medical marijuana operations that are in line with state law.
These are good things and don’t think that I oppose dispensaries, because I don’t. If two people want to engage in commerce and agree to ridiculous prices for an herb, I’ll support that to my dying day. What I have a problem with is that it seems that the black market prices and profits are becoming the de facto standard for what people envision from a legal marijuana market. My old weed dealer used to tell me it was the risk of prosecution that justified his outlaw untaxed profits. Now that marijuana is semi-legal in Colorado and California and the feds have backed off, those people making the profits don’t have that risk.
So, then, the high prices and profits must exist because of the risk the rest of us non-medical users and growers and sellers are taking due to marijuana prohibition. The people buying and selling with impunity are profiting from the arrests that ruin the lives of the rest of us and keep the price of a weed at luxury cognac levels.
Cheerleaders of this capitalism tell me that with more dispensaries come more competition and thus, lower prices. With 70 Colorado dispensaries and over 700 California dispensaries, how much longer before that competition factor kicks in?
Here’s my fear: prohibited marijuana supports a myriad of industries and it won’t become legal until those industries can shape legal marijuana into a system where they can continue to make money. “Locking people up” becomes “drug courts” and “mandatory rehab”. “Medical marijuana” becomes “Sativex” or some inhaler. “The guy” who has the hook-up becomes “the doctor” who makes recommendations. “The dealer” becomes “the dispensary”. Nothing changes but the names as cannabis consumers continue to be fleeced for a plant product that should cost as much as grapes or strawberries. Or at least as cheap as saffron.
I like this guys attitude. I have no problem with it being legal for everyone. However, your supposed fellowship will never give up their 400oz, for a weed that was so abundant in the United States it still grows wild in the Midwest. The greed factor is in and that means any chance of legalization is going to be out. As for tha a-hole who said shouldn’t stoners get paid as much as a Doctor or union plumber, 400oz for watching the grass grow is a lot more then any Doctor or union plumber I know. So it is illegal and when they overcharge that opens up Federal Prosecution. Since all the states used providing inexpensive and alternative medication for those truly in need. Meanwhile a bunch of snot nosed Yuppies seem to think that means a free pass to get stoned for that hangnail. Man I hope their is a God so he can send all the scumbags that are taking advantage of us people who are truly in pain back to swim in their own body fluids while choking on their imagined air of superiority. I gave my spine during Desert Storm and then got runover by a school bus and I will sue in Federal Court before I pay over a $100 an oz.
Up in BC it goes for $25-35 per 1/8 or $180-250 per ounce. Our labour costs are higher than the US’s (waitresses get paid $8 plus tips ; )
Alot of greedy people making money… but prices are sure to drop
To Joan Burke. Why, of course. Space Kake, cannabis Crispies, Tinctures and Many more edible pot oddities do rightfully exist. Feel free to find out more!
I have Glaucoma and if my doctor gives me a RX for Medical MJ can I get a product that is edible? I do not smoke and never have.
Also, what is the price and how is it packaged?
Please let me know. This is a legitimate request.
Thank you
JTaiChi77@aol.com
All I ever wanted was to make a fair living, doing what I love to do. At the moment I do what I love to do for free. I eagerly await the day that my reasonably priced produce can compete “right in front of god and everybody” against other producers who are just as proud of their crop as I am of mine, you know, just like the vineyards.
I’ve paid my dues, made every effort to give this emerging industry a heart and soul and all I want is to be the proprietor of a reknowned cannyard.
X.X. Xxxxxxxx
Proprietor
Bear Ass Creek Farms
Even grown indoors, under a legal market, there would be huge indoor operations, warehouse-sized, and the price should certainly not be at the low-end of black market (about $200-$300 ounce?) Labor costs would be substantially lower as you could pay general agricultural wages as opposed to wages that take into account the legal risk faced by the workers.
No matter how you slice it, in a legal market marijuana farmers would have a living similar to wine grape growers, tobacco farmers, and hops farmers. There could still be some tycoons, a la Ernest & Julio Gallo or RJ Reynolds, but it wouldn’t be every dude with a 10′x10′ canopy making enough scratch to buy a Lexus.
Watch “The Union: The Business of Getting High” to see how the “dealer with the love grass in his hand” cheers for increased mandatory minimum sentencing, because it makes the price of weed go up. Too many of the dealers/growers want the lifestyle of a farmer, but would never accept the wages of a farmer. Too many like the outlaw rebel life and the obscene profits that go with it.
It’s grown indoors, among other reasons, because there is no way to exercise the same control over all growth factors outside as there is inside. To do it properly, indoors, requires extremely costly equipment and a lot more labor . A bottle of plonk, at $4.oo is not the same as a bottle of Le Montrachet at several hundred dollars per bottle. I absolutely agree that prices are artificially high as a result of prohibition but I don’t believe that world-class cannabis will ever retail for much less than the low end of current black market prices. Right now, in Oregon, this is about 25% higher than it was 20 years ago. Russ, you and I both know that except for a very few rich men most of the money which has funded reform has come from black market cannibusinessmen. I will cite Tom Forcade as the easiest example to think of. As to being a POW, if it wasn’t for the dealer…with the love grass in his hand…there wouldn’t be a whole lot of folks in the movement, and I don’t believe the wad that went to my lawyer had anything to do with NORML.
I know, that’s why we need to eliminate the black market!
I tried, Russ, to distribute at a fair price which covered my costs and a modest profit. What happened was that I soon found my product on the street at the going rate. All my “friends” were soon out and wanting more and they all had new toys.
Now I just give it away, but only as much as you can carry out in your head.
The black market will always determine prices.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I do agree $420 for an OZ in a medical dispensary, the point of this was, pot is better medicine, safer and to cut cost to the sick and dying, at least cheaper than pills/Big Pharm. On top[ of that the whole movement is preaching a fall in prices so much so that the cartels won’t want to even mess with it, am I missing something? They are just as bad as the Rite Aid selling Big Pharms pills at $100 for 10! Why even bother then go back to the streets and forget this whole movement.
Believe me my 10 acres in KY will be full if and when they allow it and I just may give it away for say $200 a pound, considering 10 acres would net me about, um thousands of pounds! I would even supply the local Med shop for free, just as a community supporter. So everyone come to KY and make it happen, I’ll set my place up and we all can have $200 a pound prices, all day every day! FYI that’s $12.50 an ounce, I’m not greedy, I want all to have pot and all to pay a fair price for it, are we not all in this together, why are we profiting off of ourselves? Something is wrong here and it’s going to destroy our movement faster than the prohibitionists will.
Why is the cannabis being grown indoors? Why not in great huge fields, tended by cheap labor and harvested by mechanical mass production means? Prohibition, which means arrests and prisons. Name any other legal, organically grown crop that costs $80 per ounce to grow. If there was one, “cultivators” would be “cultivating” it.
A master “cultivator” shouldn’t have to risk his freedom for decades to learn horticulture. He should be able to pick it up with an undergraduate degree. He should be paid as well as a vineyard owner or hops farmer or tobacco farmer or anyone else with an undergraduate degree in horticulture. He shouldn’t be making doctor or plumber income that exists only because of arresting mostly young mostly minority mostly males who pay these palladium prices to the “cultivator”.
I have no problem with $25/gram for a fine product, so long as that price isn’t artificially inflated by locking people up. If in the legal world where I can get a legal mid-grade ounce for $80-$100 with crazy jacked-up sin taxes, some great unsung “cultivator” wants to tend an indoor organic hydroponic garden of great renown and charge people $420 per ounce for it, that’s fabulous.
The problem I do have is with people who want to live a farmer lifestyle with drug dealer profits. People who justified their expensive-as-gold (at the time) profits because of facing the risk, never donating a dime to reform and in fact in cases opposing reform and cheerleading for worse sentences* but then wail about being a “POW” and go right to NORML to find an attorney when they get caught. People who think that somehow growing a plant is commensurate with the skill and education it takes to perform surgery or the dedication and hard work it takes to repair pipes. People who feel entitled to pharmaceutical-company-level markups because they might get busted when in medical marijuana states, they are almost as legal as the pharmaceutical company.
*Interview today with filmmaker Adam Scorgie from “The Union: The Business of Getting High” who told me of British Columbian “cultivators” who openly hope for stronger mandatory minimum sentences in the US and bringing them to Canada because it helps their bottom line. The biggest opponents of marijuana law reform are the ones making money on prohibition… on both sides of the issue.
I think with taxs and all. A pack of 20 Sativa Lights with 18% potancy , with 1.5 grams per cig. should cost no more than say $19.95.
it seems to me that you’re disregarding the rather high, @ $80 per ounce it costs to grow toxin free cannabis organically indoors, this does not include anything for labor. what is the average markup for any other organic produce from farmer to end consumer? shouldn’t someone who has risked their freedom for decades to learn their craft get paid as well as a doctor or union master plumber?
what’s that name oh ya Carpetbaggers