Comments

1
If the producers were less tightly regulated, as they are in California or Colorado for example, the solution would be obvious: export the surplus. Of course that inevitably means exporting to states where cannabis is still illegal. As it is, Washington state has set itself up as a laboratory for what will happen to growers when cannabis is legal throughout the USA.
2
used to be, back in the late 70s/early 80s that weed sold for $35/oz. that's a $1.25/gram. so we've still got a ways for the price to fall. like 10x.

even then, I can't smoke very much >20% THC weed - which is what the market is saturated with. it's just too strong.

so I guess it's not going to lead to the collapse of society after all.
3
BTW, 8 tons of unsold weed = 256K ounces, and >7 million grams.
4
Why would Christie forego all that sweet, sweet MJ tax money? I mean herb is one of the top 3 black market economies in the US. I assumed that states legalizing it were largely doing so to get their grubby mitts on the potential tax revenue.

@1 - Also, WA & CO are essentially creating MJ front-runners who will be nicely positioned to rule the markets when legalization finally goes national. Not a bad strategy.
5
The over-careful regulations of the WA weed industry have really hamstrung it.

Step 1: Combine the recreational and medicinal systems (make every dispensary a store and every store a dispensary) so that everyone has more access to legal weed.
Step 2: Continue to work to drive the price of legal weed down until it actually competes with illegal weed on price and people buy less illegal weed and more legal weed.

Step 3: Allow larger volume retail packaging and sales. why have I never seen legal weed packaged in a larger quantity than an eighth? Lots of people buy lots of ounces and halves. Weed has a good shelf-life and sharing it is deeply ingrained in the culture. When people toke up in a group, they're not each smoking their own weed out of their own fancy little $15 gram baggy. If it's legal for me to have an ounce, let me buy an ounce.
6
@2:

And for those low-low prices back then you got dried, ground up whole-plant weed from Mexico and South America, sometimes from Hawaii, that averaged about 10 to 15 times less potent in terms of THC content (unless you were smoking really high-end Thai Stick or other hash-dipped sinsemilla bud, which was rather rare, as I recall) than the >20% dank available nowadays , so it's still pretty reasonable based on those comparable costs.
7
Yuck, who wants old weed? I wouldn't be surprised if that "reserve" simply ended up in a dumpster like everything else we overproduce.
8
Some of the inventory figures are fairly suspect. Production weight may be taken as whole plants at harvest, after drying, or after reducing dried plants to usable flower. All those weights vary greatly and don't necessarily relate to the weight of product sold to retailers or bought in pot shops. On top of that, there's a case of apples and oranges here: production is measured in bud, but not all weed is sold in that form. A lot of pot these days is getting turned into shatter/wax/oil, tinctures, or edibles. These aren't weighed the same. A very large weight of weed can be reduced to a very small weight of high potency extract. Thus, it calls into question whether there is a huge amount of pot out there. Wholesale prices are definitely going down, but it's hard to say there is actually a massive reserve of pot.
9
@7: Old weed doesn't get thrown out. It gets blasted into oil, wax, or shatter. Even if it's too dry or old to sell as flower for smoking, it's still too valuable to throw away.
10
@6: it's definitely reasonable now - $12 grams - but I still think the market could fall further. I've seen $8/gram already.
11
@9 I assume not everyone has the means. Trimmings can be used for making hash but it's not worth the effort if you don't have the time to process or sell it. I just don't think weed wood be a good resource to horde since it loses value over time.
12
@ 11. Agreed. But before it's useless, most I-502 producer/processors would turn it into shatter rather than toss it out. And if you have several pounds of it lying around, it's certainly cost effective to process it into shatter. If a processor doesn't have the equipment, other processors will be happy to do it for a fee.
13
#5 Uncle Ike's has ounces starting at $99 tax included. The economics of packaging individual grams is very expensive. You're right, larger packaging makes sense.
14
@13 that's amazing and I guess I'll believe if/when I see it.
The best bulk option I've seen out of several stores visited in north Seattle is eighths for about $50.
15
@14 I'm Uncle Ike and you can trust me on it. We have $7 daily grams and $99 ounces. It isn't the best top shelf weed but still damn good. The market has changed unimaginably in the past year. I think it will continue to fall but we're getting near the bottom. Keep in mind these prices are after 46.5% city and state tax and basically no standard federal expense deductions. It really shows how efficient a free market can and does operate. The $7 grams should be sustainable throughout the year, the $99 ounces are more reflective of the fall harvest.
16
@15: Is that 46.5% city and state tax a constant rate? So if retail drops by half, the tax drops by half?

Pot isn't terribly hard to grow. A number of mass-produced, legal crops like ginger, tobacco, and asparagus are a little tricky and yet sell for a few dollars a POUND = ten or twenty cents per ounce. With pot legal, security becomes less of an expense, operations expand, efficiencies abound.

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