bcaetano
Washington State is not the model to follow. In Washington State, the price of legal recreational Cannabis is over $20 per gram. That price is far too high and does not keep the black market away.

Jessica Murray
this is true, but i want people to think about something. there has to be reasonable expectations set about this.

marijuana was priced at $10/gram most of the time - $12 if there's a lot of hands and $6 if it's your friend selling it to you, or if you're buying in larger quantities - in 1996. it's still priced at $10/gram today, and higher if you're paying too many people and lower if you're paying in bulk, or from a friend. that's absolutely no inflation for at least twenty years; i can't talk about prices before 1996.

there's absolutely nothing else on the market that has prices that stable. and, this is actually a reflection of the black market. i have no idea what the profit margin is, but it must be pretty substantial if there's been zero inflation for decades. but, that's only possible due to a lack of taxes and a general operation outside of any sort of real accounting, or accountability to boards of directors.

they must be just reaping it in if they're selling it for $20/gram in washington. based on my understanding of the market, it would actually have to be profitable through the black market at as low as $5/gram - or even $3/gram. it's the only way to explain how the prices could remain so stable, when production costs must have come up along with everything else. and, the producers have to have been taking hits on inflation in production costs all these years, because prices have not increased.

the government has indicated that it understands that it has to undercut the black market to be successful. but, if you think about the economics, it's almost impossible - there's no traditional salaries involved, no taxes, etc. when you work in all these extra costs that gangs aren't paying, the best we can expect is to match the black market. but, the black market will always be able to undercut the state on this, due to these lower production costs - unless the state takes a loss to drive them out of business, which is naive in the long run.

i have to think that a big part of the reason that people stopped going to speakeasies and started going to bars was simply that they were sick of breaking the law. but, the abolition of prohibition also came with a crack down on bootlegging. they didn't just legalize alcohol. they also cracked down on illegal production.

in the short run, it has to be competitive to work. but, in the long run, the reality is that we're introducing costs and we're introducing market realities that assert the necessity of eventual inflation. there's no way around this: you're going to need to pay a little more, in the long run. but, i think it's better than the alternative...

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/trudeau-s-pledge-to-legalize-pot-he-may-want-to-look-south-1.3283698