Legal pot, under the guise of the California's medical marijuana laws, has spurred a rush of new competition. As a result, the wholesale price of pot grown in these areas is plunging...Further details at NPR. Photo credit Justin Sullivan/NPR.
Prices are now much less than $2,000 a pound, according to interviews with more than a dozen growers and dealers. Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman says some growers can't get rid of their processed pot at any price.
"We arrested a man who had … 800 pounds of processed," Allman says. "Eight hundred pounds of processed. And we asked him: 'What are you going to do with 800 pounds of processed?' And he said, 'I don't know.'"
...He says the drop in pot prices is in part the result of more growers and a more tolerant legal landscape. But he says another factor is quality. Indoor-grown marijuana is increasingly favored by dispensaries and consumers for its looks, consistence and potency. It costs more to produce than pot grown under the sun, but commands as much as double the price. That's one reason retail prices haven't hit the skids...
You might be interested in this, from the Journal of Forensic Sciences, as well:
ReplyDeletePotency Trends of Δ9-THC and Other Cannabinoids in Confiscated Cannabis Preparations from 1993 to 2008*
The University of Mississippi has a contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to carry out a variety of research activities dealing with cannabis, including the Potency Monitoring (PM) program, which provides analytical potency data on cannabis preparations confiscated in the United States. This report provides data on 46,211 samples seized and analyzed by gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC-FID) during 1993–2008. The data showed an upward trend in the mean Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) content of all confiscated cannabis preparations, which increased from 3.4% in 1993 to 8.8% in 2008. Hashish potencies did not increase consistently during this period; however, the mean yearly potency varied from 2.5–9.2% (1993–2003) to 12.0–29.3% (2004–2008). Hash oil potencies also varied considerably during this period (16.8 ± 16.3%). The increase in cannabis preparation potency is mainly due to the increase in the potency of nondomestic versus domestic samples.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1556-4029.2010.01441.x
Not surprising, really. I wonder whether to what extent the samples reflect native product vs imported.
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