16 votes

How Much Should An Ounce of Marijuana Cost In A "Free Market," Society?

I am not a stoner, but know friends who spend between $150 - $400 per month for a single ounce of weed. Holy black market expensive. It's a freaking plant for God's sake, not some precious metal!

I never would have thought that a single ounce of "high grade," marijuana would have as much value as a quarter ounce of gold.

Marijuana prohibition just doesn't make sense...in SO many ways.

So how much should and ounce of "high grade," weed cost if marijuana were to be legalized?

$20 would seem to be a fair price....taxes included.

Let's say about $10 of the cost is attributed to some kind of state tax.

Let's assume that the average American toker smokes 1 ounce of weed per month.

$10 X at least 30 million American potheads =

$300 million per month in tax revenue.

That equals $3.6 Billion per year!

What if the taxes were $50 instead of $10?

$60 bucks for an ounce of "high grade," weed...

That equals $18 Billion per year! At least...because I am being overly conservative by estimating that less than 10% of the American population smokes pot.

The LAST thing I want to do is give the government more taxpayer dollars to waste, but if legalizing weed could perhaps supplement the elimination of the Income Tax, eliminate wasteful DEA and police force expenditures, reduce crime, and make room in jail for the real criminals of society... I'm all for decriminalizing marijuana.

"How Pot Saved The West"

Trending on the Web

Comment viewing options


for the high grade

it costs a lot of money to produce indoor marijuana so prices wont just drop and honestly they already have significantly here in california, outdoor marijuana costs 40-130 dollars where indoor ranges from 100-200$ an ounce

You've hit on the linchpin

If it were legalized, the price would plummet. It probably would cost less than a pack of cigarettes. At those prices, it would be very hard to produce sufficient cash flow to support the organizations that currently produce, smuggle, and distribute weed.

I'm no expert in the inner workings of our government, but there's something stinky about the people and organizations that have invested so much money, time, and political capital into keeping pot fobidden.

Can't finance an emipire at the price of parsley.

Electricity + Labor + ~20%


My guess

How much do you pay for parsley? I'd guess some fraction of that. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, because it might be 2, 4, or 8 times as popular as parsley in people's overall diet.


Exuse me but...

Does it take hours to trim parsley?


Is guessing what the price of

Is guessing what the price of marijuana akin to the FED guessing what the interest rates should be? The only way to really know is to allow marijuana to be sold and purchased in a free market system. Until then, any thought on the price is just hypothesizing, which was the post's intent. The price would be set at whatever people are willing to pay for said product.

My opinion is the risk-cost currently involved in today's prices would be mitigated therefore the cost would decrease. Also the supply would presumably increase therefore adding another factor into a decrease in price.


a guess

In this case a guess is more like guessing how many jelly beans there are in a given jar, only guessing the proper price per ounce for pot in a hypothetically free market doesn't win you a free ounce.... but it might make your sales more efficient than your competitor's.


tasmlab's picture

Yea, maybe a $1 to cover the nice packaging

Consuming an ounce a month would make one a really stoned dude.



When reading my posts, know that mostly I'm sarcastic. However, let's say you are right. If so, then a vaporizer pen would not cause gum disease. Is it the tar that your Doc is concerned with?

Woops wrong spot on the thread. Damn you Cannabis!


less than tobacco

A bag of weed should be cheaper than an equal amount of tobacco since it requires less proccessing. And I mean the would-be real price of tobacco - sans all the greedy taxes politicians have slapped on it for "punishment" purposes. Probably $2 for an unprocessed ounce in a baggie, a few dollars more for "blends" with fancy packaging, and a slick advertising campaign.

The black market will continue for a long time, because even once they legalize they will insist on over pricing and over taxing.


In a truly free market, it

In a truly free market, it would cost less than $200 a TON..we are talkin fractions of a penny.



The black market is a free market so whatever your friend is paying now


If by "free" you mean the

If by "free" you mean the products' producers sometimes get locked in cages, then yes you have a point.

I vehemently disagree. Mass

I vehemently disagree. Mass production would drop prices tremendously. The black market isn't free because the guberment shuts down any operation that gets too big. Pennys per oz, bro


According to the Rand Corporation in 2010...

production costs would be about $200/lb or $12.50/oz. Various scenarios were analyzed including small home garden, small production facility, green house production and outdoor grows. Production costs varied from $70 to $400 per pound.

I would say

2-3 ounces of silver

That's like $120

If it were legalized, an ounce of silver would probably fetch several ounces of weed. I think you under estimate the purchasing power of a sound currency. Unwinding 100 years of inflation will eventually generate an enormous amount of wealth because you have to think about all the improvements in production that have been made over that time span, and how the dollar has been devalued over the years.

The only right answer is that its impossible to tell

because it depends on human action. It would probably be less expensive because more people would grow it, but I doubt it would become as cheap as parsely because it has much greater utility. Manufacturers would start using it in new applications, and that would put upward pressure on the hemp price and take pressure off of the inferior substitutes that they currently use. All we know is that everything would be different.

Please don't interpret this as an argument against legalization - the war on drugs is unbelievably stupid- but realize that under full legalization, a lot of other things that grow from seeds would become more expensive, because many farmers that had been growing something else would be cultivating acres of MJ instead. I think lots of people would grow it for their own personal use, but in order to sell it, they would have a hard time competing with the mass-produced stuff in an Up-and-Up bottle.

It depends..

There is some incredible marijuana being grown these days. My current favorite lately is Deathstar and it aint cheap. If I buy a quarter it will last me about a month. I dont smoke all the time. Just when I want to relax or be creative.

'Peace is a powerful message.' Ron Paul

Your version of a 'Free market'...

...includes taxes?

Free markets aren't taxed, and the value of the goods and services available in a free market are determined by the sellers and consumers. It's hard to say what the value of anything would be in a truly 'free market' as prices and demand on EVERYTHING are currently skewed by the presence of numerous governmental agencies claiming control over just about everything.

So, the answer to your question is simply another question, that being...what's it worth to you?

Next to Nothing

I have an aquaponics system 8)

The closest comparison would be

tobacco products. 1 standard cigarette contains .9grams of tobacco. Let's call it 1 gram. 28 grams in an ounce so for arguments sake lets say 1 oz of weed = 1 1/2 pack of marijuana cigs.

1 pack of tobacco cigs is roughly $5 so 1 1/2 packs = $7.50

I say if all the taxes and production costs were the same you could get 1oz worth of mary jane butts for about $7.50

Finally pissed off enough to spread the word of Dr. Paul

cheaper then corn

because weed grows faster then corn and has more uses... both medical and industrial


But Not As Good

If you've ever smoked corn, you would understand why people are willing to pay a little more for it.

Gene Louis
Supporting a Needed Tool for Government Feedback:
A Citizen-Operated Legal System.

SWIM says it's easy to

SWIM says it's easy to grow--it's a friggin' weed for god's sake!

it's easy to grow

bunk weed for sure.

Official Daily Paul BTC address: 16oZXSGAcDrSbZeBnSu84w5UWwbLtZsBms
Rand Paul 2016

With a username like MMJ

With a username like MMJ Ministry, you are clearly unbiased on the issue

Do you know anyone that currently grows?

I do and you did not account for the nutrients, equipment (although most equipment costs are only initial), and labor (unless you do it yourself).

You know how much a 1-liter bottle of one of these nutrients costs? $90-$120. And a 1-liter only lasts what, the first phase and a half of growing?

Places like WA want to tax every phase of the grow, ON TOP of when you sell your harvest. They are taxing this stuff to death not even a year into the program.

I think an ounce should cost around $100. Right now, in WA, it costs around $200-$250 for an ounce of the best (White Widow, Northern Lights, Blue Dream, G-13).

What we really need to talk about is HEMP production, people! If we really want to do something to advance this Liberty movement, HEMP is the key.

You want to get a Country out of debt? My solution is to have government incentives for people to start hemp production. There are too many uses for us not to use hemp and we have SO MUCH land that the Feds want to claim as their own! We all know what they do with "Federal protected lands." They sell it to the Chinese! Ask Fishy...

Gasoline dependence, deforestation, GMO-filled foods; all gone and replaced by hemp. Food supplements, medication derived from hemp/cannabis, soil restoration, less CO2 emissions, and on and on and on. Thousands of new businesses Nation-wide = 10's of thousands of new jobs. Possibly more.

Hemp, imo, truly is one of the answers.

Lima-1, out.

If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.

My Set Up

I bought a 50 gallon fish tank of craigslist for 50$ and then 2 new laundry tubs which stand above it

The system pumps fish water up and siphons directly don back into the tank

all in i spent 300$
works great for growing

Is that called

aqauaponics? I've heard of it but I've never seen it done.

Lima-1, out.

If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.