A few years ago, we ran an article on $99 ounces of bud for sale at Seattle-area cannabis retailers. At the time it was a big national story and “breakthrough” pricing.
“Holy crap,” I heard more than once as both local and national readers reacted to what was probably the cheapest bud on the planet at the time.
Was it any good? I’m not a smoker of the devil’s lettuce — Glenlivet 18 is more my style these days — but friends and associates told me it was decent. Well-trimmed, outdoor grown and certainly better than the Mexican weed of old, but not quite up to true connoisseur level — the stuff that puts you back in your Lazy Boy for two hours after one long toke (or three tokes if you’re the before-breakfast type of consumer).
That was about nine years ago, which is an elephant’s lifetime in this business. Three years later, we followed up with a story about $50 ounces at retail, which had become commonplace throughout the Pacific Northwest. At the time, phone calls to dozens of Seattle and Portland shops showed about one-third carried an ounce of bud at $50 or cheaper, with the cheapest prices coming in at $35 an ounce.
Fast forward to the hyper competitive cannabis business in Washington state today and what you have now is “breakthrough, breakthrough” pricing: $10 ounces!
Yikes. Yes, you read that right. That means a gram of 25% THC bud is cheaper than a Snickers bar.
Hell, I’d guess at that rate, an eighth is also less than the Snickers bar and if you went into a pot shop with five bucks in your pocket, you could buy an eighth and still have enough change for a Taco Bell Chalupa Deluxe to complement the wonderful, appetite-inducing buzz that the high-potency outdoor weed imparted on your slightly depleted brain cells. Yes, brother, that cheap and widely available — and there’s no shortage of Taco Bells in Washington either.
I bought a $10 ounce and took it home to do some further investigating. After all, while it appeared pretty good in the bag, it still resembled Jerry Garcia and needed a haircut, a trim and a good cleanup to remove the logs and the lead fishing weight that surely must be hidden in the bag somewhere to get it to full weight. Game on. Out came the trusty scissors and dusty OHAUS Triple Beam (yes, I’m that old).
As it turned out, after 10 minutes of work with the scissors, my ounce actually trimmed down to 25 grams of bud and 3 grams of leaves and stems (but no lead sinker!). Not a bad ratio when you consider a typical 1970s Mexican “lid” was also $10, but contained 1/3 seeds, 1/3 stems and 1/3 actual, smokable, 5% THC material.
I know it’s not as good as your buddy’s $300-per-ounce super strain, but when you’ve got weed and he doesn’t, he’s coming over.
In this blue state, the cost of eggs might be through the roof, but there’s no denying that 25 grams of 25% THC flower for $10 might just be the bargain of the century. The cost works out to about 40 cents a gram. With prices like that, the entire Woodstock audience could’ve gotten stoned for a couple thousand dollars back in 1969.
So, what does this mean? For starters, it’s obvious the supply and demand balance is horribly out of kilter. In this case, supply is like a firehouse filling a thimble.
Sure, demand is still there, but why buy grams or even eighths when you can get pretty much an entire ounce for 10 bucks?
“Weed gets you though times of no money better than money gets you through times of no weed” was the classic sticker on VW vans back when I was young.
When you can get 3 grams of decent bud for the same price as a candy bar, it goes without saying that the dreams of big profits promoted a decade ago have disappeared along with the dodo, honest presidents and small waistlines.
Is there any good news? If you’re a stoner with a limited budget, the news is great. Forget inflation, it’s weed lover’s heaven up here in the great Pacific Northwest.
On the other hand, for growers, retailers and processors, it looks like another year of “blue light specials.”