The Price of Weed

September 21, 2010 8:02 AM

New York:

High Quality - $448.92/oz
Medium Quality - $341.42/oz
Low Quality - $183.36/oz
posted by swift (173 comments total)

I have zero experience with this. How long does an ounce last you? (If you could compare it to the number of cigarettes, that would be helpful.)
posted by desjardins at 8:05 AM on September 21, 2010

.....sounds like some Upper East Side kids are being overcharged.
posted by The Whelk at 8:06 AM on September 21, 2010 [11 favorites]

Don't forget that many growers spray the buds with liquefied meth, so you're really getting two drugs for the price of one.
Only because you're such a good customer.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 8:07 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

desjardins: "I have zero experience with this. How long does an ounce last you? (If you could compare it to the number of cigarettes, that would be helpful.)"

When I was younger, in the early 90s in Oklahoma, you could get a quarter bag (1/4 oz of weed) for about $35-$40. That would be a sandwich bag that had roughly three fingers worth in the bottom (you could hold your hand up to the bag and the weed would be about to your third finger, which was our way of doing rough street measurements). The weight wasn't terribly accurate, since a good dealer would give you a little extra, or a bad one would pinch some out. Anyway, that was enough for a good party with 4 or 5 friends.

I hear references now to nickel and dime bags, which I only assume are 1/5 oz and 1/10 oz. I guess the grocery shrink ray applies to the drug trade also.
posted by I am the Walrus at 8:12 AM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

Don't forget that many growers spray the buds with liquefied meth,

Really? Do you have a source for this?
posted by docgonzo at 8:12 AM on September 21, 2010 [18 favorites]

Marijuana costs $180 an ounce?! What the hell are pot smokers thinking?
posted by Pastabagel at 8:13 AM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

I have zero experience with this. How long does an ounce last you?

I have a good friend who is extremely handsome and has really gorgeous legs. He tells me that he doesn't smoke very much, but he likes to have it on hand for an every once in a while kind of thing. Like a nice scotch -- some weeks, you have a dram every other day, while sometimes a month will pass without him even thinking about the stuff. This handsome, handsome friend of mine tells me that, smoking at this rate, an eighth will last him about four months. An eighth is roughly fifty bucks, so that's $12.50 a month on this habit. Which seems to my friend to be a pretty reasonable cost, overall.
posted by Greg Nog at 8:13 AM on September 21, 2010 [62 favorites]

why would growers spray buds with liquefied meth?

and how would you liquefy meth??
posted by zenwerewolf at 8:13 AM on September 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

Don't forget that many growers spray the buds with liquefied meth

Is this just an NYC thing? Has no resonance with any experience I've had in over three decades in and around the biz of acquiring and sampling weed.
posted by philip-random at 8:14 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

CURRENT US PRICE INDEX: $344 (last month: $359; year to date: $358)
CURRENT KIND INDEX ($350+ PER OZ): $405 ($418, $426)
CURRENT MIDS INDEX ($150–$349 PER OZ): $279 ($281, $278)
CURRENT SCHWAG INDEX ($1–$149 PER OZ): $110 ($95, $96)
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 8:15 AM on September 21, 2010 [5 favorites]

It would be great if the THC content was included in the labeling - the way octane is with gasoline.
posted by Joe Beese at 8:15 AM on September 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

Sprayed with liquefied meth, that's hilarious.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 8:17 AM on September 21, 2010 [16 favorites]

> I have zero experience with this. How long does an ounce last you? (If you could compare it to the number of cigarettes, that would be helpful.)

Back in the day, I knew some hardcore stoners that would roll up an ounce into big joints and power toke them all down in an evening. Stupid waste, really. An ounce could last one regular toker up to two months if he/she was using a device like a pipe or a bong with a bowl. I don't know what the kids are doing with their weed nowadays because the closest I've been to it in years and years is smelling it on delivery truck drivers in the store.

> Don't forget that many growers spray the buds with liquefied meth,

Total urban legend propagated by public school teachers. Drug dealers aren't going to give you free stuff like that. Utterly forgettable.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:20 AM on September 21, 2010 [7 favorites]

Yeah I'm out in the Westchester sticks at the moment and all this sounds ridiculously expensive. I have a few friends in this town that used to take delivery in lbs. and either they were getting a hell of a bulk discount on mid-grade stuff or everyone in NYC enjoys getting ripped off.

/doesn't smoke
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:21 AM on September 21, 2010

O, Canada.
posted by Beardman at 8:23 AM on September 21, 2010

This assumes you actually know a dealer. A friend was trying to score some weed for his brother's bachelor party and as a 30 something had zero idea where to start.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:23 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

if you're really concerned about marijuana additives like 'liquid meth' (which sounds pretty absurd to me, btw) perhaps it should be legalized so the FDA could regulate it.
posted by zenwerewolf at 8:23 AM on September 21, 2010 [5 favorites]

Oh, and circa 1995 one could get a fat ounce of high grade weed for $80-100 retail. "Retail" meaning that you didn't have to know a dealer who was a gangster.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:24 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Don't forget that many growers spray the buds with liquefied meth,

Mom, not everything you hear is true.
posted by floam at 8:25 AM on September 21, 2010 [25 favorites]

I don't smoke anymore, but you can also get great service in New York, like home delivery and nice packaging. It's a far cry from spending hours hunting down some part-time dealer your friend met at some party just to end up with a crumpled baggie (not even ziplock) of crusty Mexican shake, if you care about things like that.
posted by oinopaponton at 8:25 AM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

if you're really concerned about marijuana additives like 'liquid meth' (which sounds pretty absurd to me, btw) perhaps it should be legalized so the FDA could regulate it.

The irony here of course is that commercial, FDA-regulated marijuana would probably be full of more additives than anything you've ever bought on the street, ever. Have you LOOKED at the ingredients list on a box of breakfast cereal?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 8:28 AM on September 21, 2010 [10 favorites]

This assumes you actually know a dealer. A friend was trying to score some weed for his brother's bachelor party and as a 30 something had zero idea where to start.

Yeah, I haven't smoked in years and if I suddenly decided I wanted to do it again I wouldn't know where to find it. I suppose I could call up my nephew but then he'd probably just think Uncle Bondcliff was a narc.

I assumed the "liquid meth" comment was sarcasm. At least I hope it was.
posted by bondcliff at 8:31 AM on September 21, 2010

I hear references now to nickel and dime bags, which I only assume are 1/5 oz and 1/10 oz.

I'm fairly certain that a "dime bag" refers to $10 of product, and not to any particular quantity.

This came up on HN a while ago and someone recommended that a better methodology to measure street prices would be to buy and then weigh "dime bags" since that way you'd remove the quantity discounts, which I assume are fairly severe.

The economics of contraband and black markets really fascinate me. I guess it's because, since they're by definition operating outside of the law, they tend to be truly free markets where it's easy to see Microecon 101 playing out.

When this came up on HN a while ago, what surprised me is that there apparently isn't much of a price delta between "legal" (medically-prescribed) and black-market weed in states that allow it. I thought—perhaps naively—that much of the price of weed would be a 'risk premium,' in order to compensate the grower and dealer for doing something that could land them in prison. If this is the case, you would expect legal weed to be significantly cheaper. The fact that it isn't suggests one of a few things: one, that the price of black-market weed really doesn't have that much of a risk premium built into it (meaning either the risk is very low, or the growers and dealers are irrationally underpricing the risk), or that the legitimate channels are overpricing and essentially taking what would be the risk premium and absorbing it as additional profit (due to lack of competition or inadequate supply?). My guess is towards the latter, but I have no evidence for it.

If California does go forward with legalization, it will be interesting to see how the prices change and how the market shakes out.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:31 AM on September 21, 2010 [9 favorites]

and how would you liquefy meth??

Setting aside that the notion of spraying it on weed is nonsense, meth and related drugs can be produced in liquid form, usually for intravenous injection. There are medical versions of amphetamines designed for that purpose. Shoot, you can even get a bubblegum flavored suspension of dextroamphetamine for kids with ADD.
posted by jedicus at 8:31 AM on September 21, 2010

I suppose I could call up my nephew but then he'd probably just think Uncle Bondcliff was a narc.

This is why people have friends who are musicians.
posted by The Whelk at 8:31 AM on September 21, 2010 [5 favorites]

Liquid meth? I heard from my cousin's best friend it was PCP.

This self reporting price thing is interesting, but I assume the price of marijuana is pretty well standardized in California since there's a large legal market. One of the more interesting things about our legalization ballot measure is that some of the big "medical dispensaries" are opposing it, and the only reason that makes sense is because right now they're making a shit-ton of money as one of the few legal sources.
posted by Nelson at 8:33 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

My dealer keeps trying to cut my liquid meth with cheap weed, the bastard.
posted by Elmore at 8:33 AM on September 21, 2010 [19 favorites]

good point...
posted by zenwerewolf at 8:35 AM on September 21, 2010

Don't forget that many growers spray the buds with liquefied meth

That came up once with one of my old roommates.

Him: I dunno dude, what if it's laced with angel dust?
Everyone else: BWAHAHAHAHA.
Him: What?
Me: We paid $80 an ounce for this. We'll be lucky if its laced with weed.
posted by electroboy at 8:36 AM on September 21, 2010 [112 favorites]

I like that the bottom has some location specific information with date stamps suggesting that it's being updated on the fly.

I feel like this is a sort of wheresgeorge.com of pot.

Which, as I think about it, is something we've always really needed.
posted by quin at 8:36 AM on September 21, 2010

The irony here of course is that commercial, FDA-regulated marijuana would probably be full of more additives than anything you've ever bought on the street, ever.

Weed is more like honey or milk than like breakfast cereal, frankly, and we mostly don't worry about the purity of those... do we?
posted by uncleozzy at 8:37 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

My guess is towards the latter, but I have no evidence for it.

Circumstantial evidence would be that at least some growers in California oppose legalization on the grounds that it will kill their profit margins.
posted by jedicus at 8:37 AM on September 21, 2010

Forget meth, I want spray-on liquefied Metafilter.

To use as perfume.
posted by chavenet at 8:37 AM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

commercial, FDA-regulated marijuana would probably be full of more additives than anything you've ever bought on the street

Good point. Where regulation would be most helpful would be with heroin and cocaine, which are typically cut with toxic adulterants. In the last year, deaths associated with anthrax (in heroin) and the veterinary de-worming agent levamisole (in cocaine) have been reported in the US, Canada and Europe.
posted by docgonzo at 8:39 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Weed is more like honey or milk than like breakfast cereal

Dude... this milk is laced with cocoa powder.
posted by bondcliff at 8:39 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

It would be great if the THC content was included in the labeling - the way octane is with gasoline.

That'd be more of a concern if all weed was of otherwise equal quality. "High-quality" when it comes to weed tends to be more along the "smooth and mellow" scale than the "high THC content" scale. Now, granted, quality bourbons do have alcohol content labeled, but it's not their alcohol content percentage that makes them "high quality."
posted by explosion at 8:39 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

One of the more interesting things about our legalization ballot measure is that some of the big "medical dispensaries" are opposing it, and the only reason that makes sense is because right now they're making a shit-ton of money as one of the few legal sources.

California Beer and Beverage distributors have also contributed to No on 19.

Because weed is bad for you.

Unlike beer.
posted by Joe Beese at 8:41 AM on September 21, 2010 [5 favorites]

Don't forget that many growers spray the buds with liquefied meth,

So that means that when you smoke this sprayed weed, you simultaneously want to obsessively take apart your old VCR, and want to build a bong out of it?

Or maybe just get into a fistfight in the living room with your friend about whether or not that guy on TV right now is totally high right now.
posted by chambers at 8:42 AM on September 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

Forget meth, I want spray-on liquefied Metafilter.

There is a chicken and egg problem with this.
posted by The Whelk at 8:44 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm amazed that anyone would if they had such information, willingly put it into a site on the internet... echelon and carnivore and whatever else sniffing things along the way would make for some pretty quick location of said individuals.

I wouldn't even trust TOR or Freenet as an effective annonymization service for something like this.

If I were truly paranoid I wouldn't even look at the site.
posted by MikeWarot at 8:46 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

uncleozzy: "
Weed is more like honey or milk than like breakfast cereal, frankly, and we mostly don't worry about the purity of those... do we?"

You should google about Genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH) . Ben & Jerry rail against it on the side of many pints.
posted by I am the Walrus at 8:47 AM on September 21, 2010

Don't forget that many growers spray the buds with liquefied meth,

No, no you're doing it all wrong! The liquefied meth goes into the bottom of your hookah.
posted by ob at 8:47 AM on September 21, 2010

Pastabagel Marijuana costs $180 an ounce?! What the hell are pot smokers thinking smoking?

FTFY
posted by Drasher at 8:47 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

I saw this yesterday and find it fascinating, but it is entirely self reported:

1. 3000 submissions!!
2. More accurate prices - The average prices for different regions have now been corrected for statistical outliers. This removes potentially fake entries that skew the prices, thus providing more accurate estimates.
3. Social metrics - We have begun surveying people about the social views on marijuana in their area (law enforcement, social acceptance, etc.). This survey can be seen after a price has been submitted to the site. This will be displayed on the site once we have collected sufficient data.


Prices seem high. It is impossible to do statistical analysis with only 3000 entries in North America. But I admire the research.
posted by readery at 8:49 AM on September 21, 2010

I feel like this is a sort of wheresgeorge.com of pot.

Nah. More like davesnothere.com.
posted by ericb at 8:49 AM on September 21, 2010 [7 favorites]

I'm pretty sure uploading to this site is about the most circumstantial of evidence you could possibly get:

"Mr. Greg Nog, we have evidence that you, or an incredibly handsome friend of yours, used your computer to upload a purported price of weed."

"Oh, hello officer, I'm sure my incredibly handsome friend was just joking around. People joke around on the Internet. Would you like to see this LOLcat sing trololo?"

"Uh, no thank you. We apologize for wasting your time. Good day."
posted by explosion at 8:49 AM on September 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

California Beer and Beverage distributors have also contributed to No on 19.

Interestingly, as it turns out, in order to get their beers distributed in the state of California, many breweries are "associate" (non-voting) members of CBBD. After the announcement of CBBD's contributions to No on 19, both Sierra Nevada and New Belgium (and maybe other breweries) have made statements to the effect that the CBBD's views aren't their own.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:49 AM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

This is why people have friends who are musicians.

Stupid part-time Irish fiddle player! Stop telling me where to get the best pint of Guinness and start telling me where I can get the best Mary Jane! Do you know how many times I've had to hear you play 'Whiskey in the Jar?' Do you? DO YOU!? You owe me!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:49 AM on September 21, 2010 [9 favorites]

Nickel and dime do refer to $5 and $10. Back in the sixties $5 was worth a lot more than it is today. I remember, so obviously no permanent damage to memory.
posted by mareli at 8:51 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

I know prohibition didn't work in the 1920s... and it's still not working now.

It's time to repeal prohibition... and pass a new law that tells law enforcement that everyone has a right to do to themselves what they like, and if they don't like it ... they should GO HOME.
posted by MikeWarot at 8:52 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

a Z lasts me 3 maybe 4 hours.
posted by clavdivs at 8:53 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: We'll be lucky if its laced with weed.
posted by rusty at 8:53 AM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

I came here to jump on the "meth is water soluble, but why would they give it to you for free?" bandwagon, but a bunch of people beat me to it. I thought I'd google around and see what there was in the way of non-moral-panic reporting about it, and you'll never guess what the top link* for "spray-on meth marijuana" is.



*-Or at least, was around noon EDT today.
posted by el_lupino at 8:57 AM on September 21, 2010

And I guess I'll post that link properly now.

(Remind me why we can't edit things again...)
posted by el_lupino at 8:58 AM on September 21, 2010

You should google about Genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH). Ben & Jerry rail against it on the side of many pints.

Right, and B&J, a product manufactured by a huge corporation, doesn't use milk from cows treated with rBGH. And nearly all the dairy products in my fridge--except, maybe, the fluid milk, of which we use very little--make the same claim.

I'd eat my hat if the end of prohibition didn't lead to similar claims on commercial marijuana targeted at the high-end crowd if there arose a similar adulterant.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:58 AM on September 21, 2010

"Oh, hello officer, I'm sure my incredibly handsome friend was just joking around. People joke around on the Internet. Would you like to see this LOLcat sing trololo?"

"Why yes... Yes, I would."

"Please then, come in. I'm sorry I only seem to be wearing this thin, clingy bathrobe."

"That's quite all right. My name is Hansel, by the way."

"Officer Hansel, please feel free to get yourself something to drink as I bend over to click on my computer and start the cat video in question."

"I think I will, thank you. Say! Is this Laphroaig Quarter Cask scotch?"

"Why yes it is. Do you like scotch, Officer Hansel?"

"Yes, I do! But isn't this rather expensive?"

"A bit, yes, but it's rather high-quality. It takes me a few months to go through an entire bottle, so the overall cost of drinking this fine scotch is only about $12.50 per month."

"Ah, that's not so bad. And its high quality certainly seems appropriate for a man of refined tastes, such as yourself."

"Ha ha ha! And now, Officer Hansel, let me start the aforementioned video of a cat singing Trololo."

"HOLY SHIT THAT IS ONE CRAZY FUCKING CAT"
posted by Greg Nog at 8:58 AM on September 21, 2010 [41 favorites]

or that the legitimate channels are overpricing and essentially taking what would be the risk premium and absorbing it as additional profit (due to lack of competition or inadequate supply?). My guess is towards the latter, but I have no evidence for it.

Medical marijuana clinics in California must, by law, be nonprofits.

They have higher overhead than the kid on the corner: They have employees, health plans, rent/mortgage payments, business license fees, taxes, etc.
posted by rtha at 8:58 AM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

A friend was trying to score some weed for his brother's bachelor party and as a 30 something had zero idea where to start.

Oddly enough, this was how I decided I was officially "old." I no longer knew where to buy pot.
posted by generichuman at 9:01 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

I no longer knew where to buy pot.

In my experience, bartenders are almost universally pot friendly.
posted by geoff. at 9:04 AM on September 21, 2010

High Quality - $448.92/oz

I'm absolutely not going to visit this site at work - do they explain how they're calculating these prices? There's a pretty big steep discount, so if they're taking, say, the price of 1/8th oz (a pretty typical amount for a single person to buy at a time) and multiplying it by 8, that's not the same price they'd get for a whole oz at once.

I think that's what they must be doing - $50 for 1/8 of "high quality" doesn't seem out of line to me, but $450 with no quantity discount seems a bit steep.
posted by muddgirl at 9:05 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

If I were truly paranoid I wouldn't even look at the site.

I am truly paranoid and am not even looking at the site. However, as a practical matter, I doubt whether busting someone for a one-ounce buy would be professionally rewarding enough for a narc to undertake the required tech snooping.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:06 AM on September 21, 2010

I'd eat my hat if the end of prohibition didn't lead to similar claims on commercial marijuana targeted at the high-end crowd if there arose a similar adulterant.

What do you mean, you think such claims aren't made now?

"Dude, that is the dankest russian purple dwarf you are ever gonna find, man, only $150 a quarter! It was totally grown in a hydroponic set up!"
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 9:10 AM on September 21, 2010

Y'know the saddest thing about all this is that there's no listing for hashish. Heathens.
posted by i_cola at 9:12 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

In working on a freelance piece that went know where , I was working as a ChaCha guide a little while back on and off for week. This site would have answered many of the questions I received.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:13 AM on September 21, 2010

Since when is 1 oz considered "quantity"?
posted by electroboy at 9:14 AM on September 21, 2010

There are still significant risks even for the "legitimate channels". What the law says and what law enforcement do are two different things. There are also some significant voids in the law that don't cover certain things, for example edibles. In some areas edibles are prosecuted as illicit drugs, or are subject to commercial health codes (as they should be).

In addition, there is a lot of vacillating on the part of municipal agencies as to what is permissible and what isn't. What's legal or permissible today may not be next week, then may be legal again next year. That uncertainty creates a lot of risk.

As far as pricing goes, there is a lot of variety in the plants themselves; THC content, bud density. Add to this the usual agricultural uncertainties, pests, mold, and there is a considerable unpredictability in the outcome of a grow operation. On top of that, there is a great deal of demand for bud that has great bag appeal - pretty buds, lots of color, density, etc. A lot of perfectly good bud gets processed into hash because it's not marketable.

So, high end bud, $500 an ounce. Decent bud, $200. There is a wide variety of pricing, and the prices are pretty volatile. I think you see the same sort of price spread in beer. Cheap beer (Natural Lite) versus a great ale (Chimay), there is a huge price spread.
posted by Xoebe at 9:16 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Also, note the variance in low-to-medium prices in contrast to high quality prices. Nationally, high quality is pretty much the same with little variation, except in pot friendly areas of the country. Contrast this to how cheap low end prices are ($60 in Oklahoma vs $100 in North Carolina ... 40%!) ... depending on whether or not I-35 runs through the state. Just run up Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and you see how cheap low-end prices are compared to neighboring states. I bet if you broke this down by county or zip code, the difference would be even more stark.
posted by geoff. at 9:17 AM on September 21, 2010

Really... I'd love to know where these numbers came from, how many sources, what quantities, etc. 'Cuz the per-ounce price goes through the roof when you buy in small amounts.

Back in the day, I recall getting ounces of so-called "gold" for $35 per. However, that was herb that had traveled, was full of seeds, and varied wildly in quality.

During the 80s when US domestic growers realized they could cross sativa strains with indicas, permitting outdoor growing in colder climes, and the concept of "sensemilla" was introduced, quality went up, seeds disappeared and prices began a steady upward spiral. By making the borders impermeable to the trade, De Gubmint pushed growers to develop ever stronger strains, such that now domestic herb commands prices linked to the specific strain being sold. I.E. something touted as "Pure Haze" can go for a lot more than something else called " 'sense' of indeterminate origin." Or so I'm told.

Meanwhile, I'm old but a bit wistful. I think I need to meet some NYC bartenders.
posted by kinnakeet at 9:18 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh, and circa 1995 one could get a fat ounce of high grade weed for $80-100 retail. "Retail" meaning that you didn't have to know a dealer who was a gangster.

Oh, and circa 1976 one could get a fat ounce of decent weed for $12. Stoners have way more money these days than we did, apparently.

Get off my lawn.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 9:19 AM on September 21, 2010

muddgirl: High Quality - $448.92/oz

I'm absolutely not going to visit this site at work - do they explain how they're calculating these prices? There's a pretty big steep discount, so if they're taking, say, the price of 1/8th oz (a pretty typical amount for a single person to buy at a time) and multiplying it by 8, that's not the same price they'd get for a whole oz at once.

I think that's what they must be doing - $50 for 1/8 of "high quality" doesn't seem out of line to me, but $450 with no quantity discount seems a bit steep.

Amusingly*, if that's what they're doing, they are doing the same thing the police do when they report how much "street value" of a drug bust is. For example, anybody who is buying certain substances may be $1000 for an ounce of it, which isn't an uncommon sale, but when it's sold in quarter gram bags for $60, that same ounce has a "street value" of $6,720, even though often, nobody is selling it and that individually small level. Guess which one the police report when the haul shit out in front of the cameras?

* - depends on your definition of "amusing"
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:20 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Anecdotal: 20 years ago, a low quality 1/8 oz would give one teenager, playing hookie, a pretty good one day bender.

Dime bag used to be a gram, with 28 grams in an ounce. Gram could be 2-4 cigarettes, depending on how it was rolled. My memory is poor on this for some reason....
posted by acheekymonkey at 9:21 AM on September 21, 2010

During the 80s when US domestic growers realized they could cross sativa strains with indicas, permitting outdoor growing in colder climes, and the concept of "sensemilla" was introduced, quality went up, seeds disappeared and prices began a steady upward spiral.

Wow, I'm flashing back now. It was easy to spot strangers who liked the weed when I was growing up - just look for the spotted unravelings on their jean thighs. They were where seeds had popped and landed on their legs while cruising around and getting high.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 9:23 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

> hey were where seeds had popped and landed on their legs while cruising around and getting high.

A person might have a problem with their pot habit if they can't be arsed to remove the seeds prior to rolling/packing.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:29 AM on September 21, 2010

Back in my younger days I started smoking socially with friends, and after a while started feeling guilty about the fact that I wasn't contributing to the Saturday night stash that got passed around. So I went out and tried to purchase an ounce or so so that I could feed it back into that economy (trying to find a second source was amusing in itself).

I eventually did manage to contribute that to the general welfare of my weekend social group, but I eventually came to the conclusion that:

1. Unless you're a total asshole or consume enough that it's gonna cause a problem in your life, it's pretty much available for free. You probably know someone who grows their own and is totally willing to share.
2. The only people who buy are either people who are smoking to excess, the aforementioned assholes, or the people on the higher economic end of a given social group of smokers who are feeling guilty about taking advantage of said smokers.
3. That latter group is probably already perceived as feeding enough other stuff back into the group ("Dude, you brought good beer? And burgers for the grill, not just hot dogs? Wow!") that nobody begrudges them a hit off the bong.

Which means that it may be possible to quantify the externalities involved in marijuana trade by looking at a reported street price, but see #2 about who's actually paying that directly, it's a very small portion of smokers.
posted by straw at 9:29 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Officer Hansel and I talk urbanely of various issues of the day. Presently I say, 'Officer Hansel, perhaps you would like to see my cling-film?'
posted by boo_radley at 9:36 AM on September 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

A person might have a problem with their pot habit if they can't be arsed to remove the seeds prior to rolling/packing.

I don't think I've even seen a seed since I found (yes, really) a fat bag of some terrible-looking shake behind a book at the public library in 1996. Dear whoever's weed that was: I'm sorry if I ripped you off, but honestly, I was probably doing you a favor.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:36 AM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

Wow there are a lot of people getting ripped off out there.

A dime/nickel bag is $10/$5 worth and what is anyone in this thread talking about?
posted by cmoj at 9:37 AM on September 21, 2010

> what is anyone in this thread talking about?

Your mother and what an unregenerate stoner she is.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:39 AM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I haven't smoked in years and if I suddenly decided I wanted to do it again I wouldn't know where to find it.

This is SUCH a grandiose failure of capitalism.
What kind of future is this???
posted by Theta States at 9:40 AM on September 21, 2010 [6 favorites]

I guess if I were an enterprising member of the DEA, I would think I could get all kinds of support from my organization if I had the idea of collecting the IP addresses of people who willingly posted the prices they paid for their illegal substances on a simple SQL database website I could set up and implement in a weekend.
posted by crunchland at 9:42 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

> I guess if I were an enterprising member of the DEA, I would think I could get all kinds of support from my organization if I had the idea of collecting the IP addresses of people who willingly posted the prices they paid for their illegal substances on a simple SQL database website I could set up and implement in a weekend.

Scary! But really, there are tons of forums out there where people are revealing far more than how much they paid for a bag of weed 20 years ago. The DEA doesn't chase shadows like that.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:45 AM on September 21, 2010

The DEA doesn't chase shadows like that. -- "In 2000, more than 734,000 people were arrested in this country for marijuana-related offenses alone." source
posted by crunchland at 9:49 AM on September 21, 2010

Metafilter Parfum: Eau De Beans™
posted by milarepa at 9:50 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

> The DEA doesn't chase shadows like that. -- "In 2000, more than 734,000 people were arrested in this country for marijuana-related offenses alone." source

That's not a refutation of my statement. Those arrests weren't from logging IP addresses. Silly.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:51 AM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

Medical marijuana clinics in California must, by law, be nonprofits.

Just because the corporation is set up as a non-profit entity doesn't mean that someone in the supply chain isn't making money and absorbing the additional margin. (FWIW, Ikea is a non-profit.) The profit-taking could be in some manner other than ordinary dividends; it could be that the owners of the dispensaries are taking salaries that are larger than what a street dealer makes. Or, as you suggest, they and their employees are getting benefits that don't exist to people in the traditional black-market drug trade.

But the question it leads me to wonder about is where the price will stabilize at, if full or nearly-full legalization were to occur. Obviously the amount of tax might be a factor, and a legitimate grower will have a lot more overhead than someone growing plants illegally in a state park and selling it to a dealer for retail distribution, but it seems odd that the prices would stay at a level that was determined when conditions were very different. Cigarettes and tobacco are heavily taxed, but per ounce they're still quite cheap per ounce—at least cheap enough that none of the smokers I know are considering growing their own tobacco (although smuggling from low-tax jurisdictions like Indian reservations is fairly popular).
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:52 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

kinnakeet wrote: "During the 80s when US domestic growers realized they could cross sativa strains with indicas, permitting outdoor growing in colder climes, and the concept of "sensemilla" was introduced"

I think you have your timing off. Sort of like the posted site has its prices off. Who in their right mind would pay almost $200 an ounce for mexican dirt weed? Even buying it in small quantity you'd never pay that much..unless somebody thought you were an asshole and deserved to get ripped off.
posted by wierdo at 9:57 AM on September 21, 2010

1. Unless you're a total asshole or consume enough that it's gonna cause a problem in your life, it's pretty much available for free. You probably know someone who grows their own and is totally willing to share.

Is your name Kenny and are you the moocher who would come to my door at 8:30 AM on a Sunday morning, while my mom was in the kitchen, and ask me to pack your bowl for you?

If that's you, then you should go take a flying fuck. I'm sick and tired of being used by you, you fucking piece of shit dirtbag moocher stoner.

I've been waiting 22 years to tell you that. I'm glad that's finally off my chest.

If your name isn't Kenny, then forget I said anything.
posted by bondcliff at 9:59 AM on September 21, 2010 [25 favorites]

Saw this a few years ago. Not just prices, but where to find it as well. Their entry on Seoul was particularly amusing. It has been updated in the meantime, but it used to warn "It's so illegal that even if you find any, it won't make you high because you'll be too paranoid about getting caught"
posted by yoHighness at 9:59 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Scarborough, UK:

Variable Quality - £130-£170 /oz

(US equivalent: $202 - $264/oz)

Quality ranges from Amsterdam coffee shop style through to Crappest Bogweed - price is no indication of quality here in downtown Scarborough.
posted by Monkeymoo at 10:05 AM on September 21, 2010

I'm from New York. I never have to pay for the stuff fortunately, but these prices are actually lower than what i've seen around.. an oz of really high quality stuff an easily be over 500.
posted by Liquidwolf at 10:05 AM on September 21, 2010

All this herb talk... dang... hey, somebody order a pizza!
posted by kinnakeet at 10:11 AM on September 21, 2010

Ya, my friends and I always use to joke that the easiest place to score drugs was in high school.
posted by rosswald at 10:15 AM on September 21, 2010

That's not a refutation of my statement. -- My point was that the government arrested three-quarters of a million people in 2000 on cannabis related charges. It is within the realm of reason that they might consider tracking the people inane enough to log the cost of their illegal purchases on an internet website. Unless you have some inside information on the machinations of the DEA...?
posted by crunchland at 10:15 AM on September 21, 2010

Mefi dope threads always are the same: a majority of stoners and ex-stoners wistfully pointing out that prohibition is stupid and a small, ridiculed, but inevitable strain of dead ender Just Say No-ers mentioning laughable urban myths.

I'd like to see a geographical comparison of stoner etiquette. For example, in which areas is "puff, puff, pass" acceptable, compared to "puff, pass." Or, in which areas does the point of etiquette of "always hand the green hit to someone else, unless everyone in the circle has already had a green hit" prevail?

Someone very attractive told me about these strange behaviors.
posted by norm at 10:18 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Since when is 1 oz considered "quantity"?

Well, it's a quantity, and if a dealer won't give a discount for unloading a quarter of a qp then they're not very good at business. Really, it's not so much a discount as a dis-incentive for buying small quantities.

This impression may be colored by the fact that I only have second-hand knowledge of the suburban college trade, which is probably much different than what goes on in urban centers.
posted by muddgirl at 10:19 AM on September 21, 2010

High Quality - $448.92/oz

Makes some sense in NYC: When I lived there I used to get delivery. A bike messenger would be paged to come to your place, and would have the stuff in small plastic containers like these. Depending on the delivery service you used (Cartoon Network was a huge one that got busted but had an impressive list of celebrity clients) they would sometimes label the strain so you knew what you were getting. They cost $50 per box that had roughly an 1/8th. The downside though is that most of the time they only had AK-47 or Soul Diesel which are both incredibly potent strains that will knock you out.

The real interesting part of all this is how they cultivate it: renting out apartments in Queens and sealing them air-tight to set up a grow operation.
posted by wcfields at 10:21 AM on September 21, 2010

Total urban legend propagated by public school teachers. Drug dealers aren't going to give you free stuff like that. Utterly forgettable.

I have a friend who found it profitable in his local market conditions to add shake to mid-grade stuff and sell it as high-grade. Lacing absolutely does happen, though it is uncommon with marijuana. The wiki links to several examples. Adding cheaper potent drugs is perfectly rational in some markets. In particular heroin laced with fentanyl has resulted in a fair number of deaths. Some users know and are looking for fentanyl, which is very potent for the money, but others were probably misled by claims that it was just very pure heroin.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 10:22 AM on September 21, 2010

I want to see a site that shows the price of weed vs. the murder rate in Juarez.
posted by acheekymonkey at 10:24 AM on September 21, 2010

I'd like to see a geographical comparison of stoner etiquette. For example, in which areas is "puff, puff, pass" acceptable, compared to "puff, pass." Or, in which areas does the point of etiquette of "always hand the green hit to someone else, unless everyone in the circle has already had a green hit" prevail?

Joints you puff if a few times if you feel like. The reason is if there's a lot of people it may be all smoked by the time it comes back around.

Just as one would serve coffee, cocktails, food to your guests first, it's courtesy to give greens to your guest unless you have some elaborate setup that requires you to spark the joint or run a vaporizer or what have you.

Spilling bong water is, and will always be, one of the worst party fouls possible. Beer can be cleaned up, feelings can be unhurt, but that smell never goes away.
posted by wcfields at 10:25 AM on September 21, 2010

Makes some sense in NYC: When I lived there I used to get delivery. A bike messenger

I was one of those messengers for a while. It was a good gig.
posted by Liquidwolf at 10:26 AM on September 21, 2010

Did ya get tips?
posted by The Whelk at 10:29 AM on September 21, 2010

$400-450 for very high quality, home delivery from a highly trusted source, in vacuum sealed bags exactly weighed, all bud, generally not quite as good as the same money buys you on the west coast. West coast quality shit more like $500, but then a little pinch will keep you going for quite a while. When trusted guy is away, he has a backup network.

Or so I hear. I wouldn't know personally of course.

Hey, if you can't afford to live in New York, move to Omaha. I hear you can buy a house there for 100K too.
posted by fourcheesemac at 10:36 AM on September 21, 2010

> Did ya get tips?

They probably call them "pinches" in that industry.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:36 AM on September 21, 2010

Someone very attractive told me about these strange behaviors.

Was it Greg Nog's "friend"?
posted by Nabubrush at 10:51 AM on September 21, 2010

Mefi dope threads always are the same

People with short-term memory loss who forget the past are doomed to something something.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:54 AM on September 21, 2010 [7 favorites]

i quit smoking when weed went to $80/ounce, which was sometime in the mid-late 80s, i think. paying more than that just really harshed my mellow, you know?
posted by msconduct at 10:56 AM on September 21, 2010

> Did ya get tips?

They probably call them "pinches" in that industry.

Yeah, but usually the tip was just being asked to come in and partake, which I usually didn't want to do while I was working. I did enjoy hanging out with unusual folks, who i wouldn't otherwise be hanging with. Interesting way to see another side of culture , especially in NYC.
posted by Liquidwolf at 11:00 AM on September 21, 2010

I know a "regular" guy and he pays 25/7g, 100/28g, 750/458g.
A "irregular" guy I know pays 150/7g, 400/28g and 3k/458g

Sounds about right.
posted by winks007 at 11:03 AM on September 21, 2010

I don't know about short term memory loss, but long term nostalgia for those days when weed was $80 an ounce seems intact. OK, when I was growing up it was even less. And the dope was for shit. You could also buy a good bottle of wine for $3 until the late 1980s. Heck a Ford Mustang would run you about $9K in 1980, if I am recalling right.

Like everyone sane I hope the stuff is legalized and the price goes down when the average smoker doesn't have to carry the cost of a massive, absurd law enforcement apparatus. But it depends what you value, doesn't it? I know idiots who pay $4 for a cup of freaking coffee every day, and people that will buy $50 vodka. Both turn into piss in the end.

Also, where can I get some liquid meth?
posted by fourcheesemac at 11:08 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

1. Unless you're a total asshole or consume enough that it's gonna cause a problem in your life, it's pretty much available for free. You probably know someone who grows their own and is totally willing to share.

You know, I thought that was true until I went away to a graduate program where everyone was an alcoholic who hated weed. I had one pot-smoking friend who was willing to share her connection, but otherwise the only options for buying were shadesters (asking some dude in a bar). And once my pot-smoking friend graduated, it was 2 years of nothing nothing nothing. There were a few people who smoked it, but no one willing to go to the trouble of, you know, buying it.

My smoking habits tend to be close to Greg Nog's handsome friend's habits--I stockpile it for very gradual personal use. And you know what? Freeloaders had now problem with asking me if they could share my weed, but never reciprocated, and at this point I've had the same teeny tiny bit for two years, which I never smoke, because it's so terribly precious. I'm sorry, but bringing over some cookies is not the same as procuring a hard-to-acquire illegal substance, and if you're not contributing and sharing and just smoking other people's stuff you are probably an asshole.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:14 AM on September 21, 2010 [7 favorites]

Also, where can I get some liquid meth?

When god hands you lemons, you find a new god.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:16 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Would you like to see this LOLcat sing trololo?

Actually, yes. Yes, I would. And I don't even smoke.
posted by davejay at 11:18 AM on September 21, 2010

The dealer you want to know is the one who buys directly from the grower. In my town the best-priced, most consistently tasty/pretty weed I've had - with dealer markup - is $300/ounce. There are no price breaks because the stuff just plain costs $300 per ounce (which I love), and there is only one middle-man, which keeps the cost way low for the quality. It also always weighs out slightly heavy, which is probably very good for keeping a loyal customer base. Gotta love a smart dealer.
posted by heyho at 11:19 AM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

(Remind me why we can't edit things again...)

Because then we wouldn't be able to mock you.

[Muntz: Ha-ha!]
posted by five fresh fish at 11:39 AM on September 21, 2010

I am (well, was) a bartender.

Do not ask me to find you weed.

Can I? Yes.

Will I? No.

If the bartender wants to get you high, he or she will bring it up. The best way to get 86ed in my bar is to start asking around for weed. Cuz you know who does that? Fucking narcs do that. And I d hate to think you are a fucking narc.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 11:41 AM on September 21, 2010 [8 favorites]

Asking a bartender where you can get weed is like asking a pimp where you can pick up girls.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 11:46 AM on September 21, 2010

(Not that bartenders are pimps)
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 11:47 AM on September 21, 2010

actually if my experience holds true the best way to find some weed is to be be friendly with the tweedier professors in your college history department.
posted by The Whelk at 11:48 AM on September 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

O, Canada.
Seriously. You guys never wondered why we have a leaf on the flag?
Also, found another similar site, keyed to cities.

I'll admit, I never thought of looking this sort of thing up on der interwebs.
posted by LD Feral at 12:00 PM on September 21, 2010

Also, because I was morbidly fascinated: Trololocat. (SYTL)
posted by LD Feral at 12:04 PM on September 21, 2010 [5 favorites]

Looks like after you NYC folks have a visit from the bike messenger, you can also get a grilled cheese.
posted by fogovonslack at 12:10 PM on September 21, 2010

Sounds like the bygone Brooklyn Cupcake Service ...which as a front for what again?


Yeah.
posted by The Whelk at 12:11 PM on September 21, 2010

If the NY bike messengers are anything like the ones in DC, I'm not letting one of those guys give me a grilled cheese!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:16 PM on September 21, 2010

I've never bought pot and wouldn't even know where to start. All my experiences of pot are along the lines of, "Oh look, I am around people who are smoking pot. I suppose I could try one little toke; they all seem to like it not sure why I have'n-cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough [for 20 minutes]".
posted by Deathalicious at 12:17 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Just popped in to say that "they spray the buds with liquefied meth" is absolute horseshit urban myth.

They spray them with AIDS-infected needles.
posted by IAmBroom at 12:29 PM on September 21, 2010

liquified needles, that is.
posted by Theta States at 12:34 PM on September 21, 2010

Yeah, but most dealers totally cut them with Hep-C needles.
posted by Burhanistan at 12:48 PM on September 21, 2010

Those make the best brownies.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:54 PM on September 21, 2010

If I were truly paranoid I wouldn't even look at the site.

But here look how many people happy to share their pot smoking habits with you!
posted by micawber at 12:57 PM on September 21, 2010

It is within the realm of reason that they might consider tracking the people inane enough to log the cost of their illegal purchases on an internet website.

That's why I only post my pot prices on those non-internet websites. (Oh, and I used to deal in college circa '94. The best price I ever bought at was $100/ounce for decent quality, but I was buying a half-pound so it was heavily discounted.)
posted by coolguymichael at 12:59 PM on September 21, 2010

A long time ago in a galaxy far away:

Average stuff, so called Minnesota green $10-12 per oz.

Good "Mexican" $15 per oz.

Not that I ever bought any, but so I heard...
posted by mygoditsbob at 1:08 PM on September 21, 2010

Is this the part of the thread where we start estimating the price when you add the cost of munchies?
posted by not_on_display at 1:14 PM on September 21, 2010

popcorn is cheap man.
posted by The Whelk at 1:15 PM on September 21, 2010

Is this the part of the thread where we start estimating the price when you add the cost of munchies?

Brings to mind that much of long-gone Kozmo.com's customer base was likely stoners seeking munchies to be delivered. Kind of like Pink Dot in L.A.
posted by ericb at 1:20 PM on September 21, 2010

* cough*
posted by The Whelk at 1:20 PM on September 21, 2010

Is this the part of the thread where we start estimating the price when you add the cost of munchies?

Three words: organic. baby. carrots. Cheap, crunchy, flavorful, compatible with all sorts of dip, and you can eat the whole bag and not feel bad about it!
posted by vorfeed at 1:21 PM on September 21, 2010

Random discoveries made over the years:

1. In a northern UK town, one of the more prosperous, a friend (note 1) told me that a perfectly respectable courier company ran a parallel dope delivery service. You rang up, placed your order, and a man on a bike dropped off your package at the front desk of your workplace half an hour later. (Said friend had been a regular, enthusiastic toker since schooldays. He only took a break in his 30s, when an accident laid him up in hospital for a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks after that, the first symptoms of his MS showed up. His consultant told him that it was almost certain that the cannabis had been keeping it down. The MS developed from there.)

2. In Amsterdam, the cold hand of economics has led to a complete spectrum of products, with punters able to trade off price, convenience and quality - as well as being able to select from a wide range of effects from knock-you-out to ecstatic in-orbit trippery. The cliches of the coffee shop, filled with tourists and blasted youth, somewhat mask the widespread at-home habits of every part of Dutch society - respectable matrons and silver-haired execs included.

There is no evidence that Dutch society is much harmed by this: although they are a bloody-minded nation with two senses of humour - Arizona dry or febrile slapstick - that you'd do best to understand before engaging in commercial or personal interaction, this seems unrelated. (note 2)

3. A wide variety of adulterants are commonly found in UK hashish and to a lesser extent cannabis, although nothing psychoactive. However, the various scares of really nasty stuff (ground glass on buds to make them look resinous is the latest that I'm aware of) seem to be just that - scares. Remember strychnine in acid? Nonetheless, smoking up soap (the generic brown hash) will get you lungfuls of henna and other unwelcome compounds, and the process by which imported hash is cut - basically, bashed to bits in its wrapping and stirred in with the matrix - leaves shreds of polythene in the finished bar, so you get what you pay for. Worse than Marlboro Lights? Who can tell. Herbal cannabis is often sold damp, or heavily compressed to disguise a high percentage of seeds and stems.

4. Among the social group I know best - which is 20 to 50 year old working and middle class urban types - smoking cannabis is a minority undertaking that is rarely hidden from peers, as there is little to no perception of it as worthy of criminal sanction or censure beyond that meted out to tobacco smokers.

5. All of the above - sophisticated supply lines, the emergence of a normal market when allowed, and increased risks due to profit-related tampering in the absence of consumer protection, social acceptance, are in keeping with other experiences of prohibition past and present, and the emergence of a regulated market would seem in keeping with the normal workings of a Western-style liberal society.

(note 1: yes, a friend)
(note 2: I am very fond of the Dutch, and imagine a United Kingdom that included that fine nation would work rather well. However, previous experiments along those lines had mixed results.)

(postscript: None of the above should be taken as an admission of personal contravention of extant law regarding controlled substances, but as the normal observations of someone with reasonable experiences of the milieu in which he swims.)
posted by Devonian at 1:24 PM on September 21, 2010 [3 favorites]

The downside though is that most of the time they only had AK-47 or Soul Diesel which are both incredibly potent strains that will knock you out.

Where I grew up it was always just (and still is from what I hear) "weed". No choices of what to buy, no catchy names - you bought what the guy sold and you smoked it.
posted by NoraCharles at 1:25 PM on September 21, 2010

Yup, I totally skewed the results for my locale. They just accepted $1000/oz for medium weed.
posted by clvrmnky at 1:38 PM on September 21, 2010

It was easy to spot strangers who liked the weed when I was growing up - just look for the spotted unravelings on their jean thighs.

That's why I was never into weed - too much staring at the roughed up inner thighs of strange men. Acid was WAY easier to locate - you just look for the stranger with steak knives scotch taped all the way down his forearms, crying out "I am the ESSENCE of SHARPNESS! It's not like it wasn't ever this impossible before, no one just TRIED HARD ENOUGH!" and then weeping openly in a grocery.
posted by FatherDagon at 1:43 PM on September 21, 2010 [7 favorites]

@wcfields - Interesting. Didn't know about the Cartoon Network. These days, I guess you'd just use cellphones instead of pagers/landlines and change them every three months. You could afford the cost at $15 for basic phones plus that of having new business cards to give to customers. Or with those sort of margins, just hand over a new phone with new numbers pre-programmed with every six orders, and collect the old one. All sorts of changes you could ring like that, to say nothing of using that darned Internet.

Also interesting that it took an anonymous tip-off for the police to even be aware of such a widespread and long-established network. You'd have thought, cannabis being such a social menace that it needs to be criminalised, that some of the inevitable collateral damage would have been noticed and investigated.

Talking of collateral damage: London has had a spate of rented houses being used for growing by organised Vietnamese gangs. That's great, unless you're the landlord and get a call from the police - someone I know was in that position and they got thoroughly turned over by the experience. Not by the police, who were systematically going through the houses (about one a day, at peak) following electricity consumption monitoring and infra-red aerial scans, and who knew that the landlords were not in on the scam, but by the house insurers. They refused to pay up for the enormous amount of damage done by the growers, even though my friend is a commercial solicitor and had done things by the book by getting proper landlord's insurance. That only covered accidental or malicious damage, the insurers said, and the bashing through of walls, ruining of carpets and trashing of furniture was neither accidental nor malicious.

Last I heard, the London domestic growing gangs had been eliminated - if by eliminated, you mean moved to the towns and villages around London where there's no one police force with the same focus as the Met. I've noticed no particular diminution in the amount of skunk I smell being smoked on the street by our local youth.
posted by Devonian at 2:08 PM on September 21, 2010

the stranger with steak knives scotch taped all the way down his forearms, crying out "I am the ESSENCE of SHARPNESS! It's not like it wasn't ever this impossible before, no one just TRIED HARD ENOUGH!" and then weeping openly in a grocery.

Shit, dude, those were the days. Good times, good times.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:36 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah... yeah... they were... but, like, have you ever thought about, like, your hands? I mean, look at them. They're, like, meant for grasping and stuff, totally. Heh. Yeah, man... the HANDS.

Wasn't someone talking about food or something earlier?
posted by not_on_display at 3:11 PM on September 21, 2010

you bought what the guy sold and you smoked it.

yep. i really do not feel like i have a lot of leverage with my dealer. looking for a connection with reasonably priced stuff is a sucky task, and i am totally not up to saying, 'you know, this is kind of garbage. i'm taking my business elsewheres.'

please legalize soon please please please
posted by angrycat at 3:47 PM on September 21, 2010

Meth-A-Filter
posted by vibrotronica at 3:54 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

What the fuck is an oz.? Can you put that into grams for me?
posted by Eideteker at 4:02 PM on September 21, 2010

That's why I was never into weed - too much staring at the roughed up inner thighs of strange men. Acid was WAY easier to locate - you just look for the stranger with steak knives scotch taped all the way down his forearms, crying out "I am the ESSENCE of SHARPNESS! It's not like it wasn't ever this impossible before, no one just TRIED HARD ENOUGH!" and then weeping openly in a grocery.

Hey, it was a long time ago. And just that once.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 4:10 PM on September 21, 2010

Here you go, Eideteker.
posted by heyho at 4:28 PM on September 21, 2010 [2 favorites]

Believe me, every American kid can do grams to ounces. It's the one bit of metric that's actually useful to your average pot smoking high school student.
posted by Nelson at 5:33 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

For a comparison, here's the menu for a legal L.A. shop that a handsome man I know frequents. The prices are gram-1/8-1/4-1/2-OZ.

Yeah, its way more expensive than it was when I was a kid, but its so ridiculously strong that per-buzz it's cheaper than Mexican ditchweed.
posted by Bookhouse at 6:04 PM on September 21, 2010

What the fuck is an oz.?

The topic of this thread, and the answer is, $400, give or take, not the same as out of town.

Seriously, someone upthread commented that anyone who has to buy their pot rather than freeloading it when it's around has a problem. I call bullshit. And someone else remarked in paranoid fashion about sharing one's drug using habits.

This shit will stop when accomplished people are not ashamed to say they use marijuana. It is a fucking plant with an ancient history of medicinal and recreational use. It has no significant deleterious health effects when used in moderation, just like any inebriant should be used. But "moderation" does not mean "abstinence," nor does it mean "when I am around other people who smoke" to all of us.

Willie Nelson shows us how it's done: yeah, I smoke pot, you have a problem with that? Talk to my legacy.
posted by fourcheesemac at 6:09 PM on September 21, 2010 [11 favorites]

uncleozzy: Weed is more like honey or milk than like breakfast cereal, frankly, and we mostly don't worry about the purity of those... do we?

You're not from Michigan, are you?
posted by bentley at 6:24 PM on September 21, 2010

I want to see a site that shows the price of weed vs. the murder rate in Juarez.

I want to see a site that shows the price of lots of raw materials(oil..cough...cough or coltan) vs. the murder rates in the countries where those materials are "procured".
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 7:35 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

On topic I admit I have smoked in the past, but I never inhaled.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 7:36 PM on September 21, 2010

Weed is more like honey or milk than like breakfast cereal, frankly, and we mostly don't worry about the purity of those... do we?

You ought to.

Honey Laundering

The honey business is plagued with international intrigue, where foreign hucksters and shady importers sometimes rip off conscientious packers with Chinese honey diluted with cheap sugar syrup or tainted with illegal antibiotics.

posted by BinGregory at 7:48 PM on September 21, 2010

Would you like to see this LOLcat sing trololo?

Actually, yes. Yes, I would. And I don't even smoke.

Well, since you asked.
posted by electroboy at 8:06 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

Joints you puff if a few times if you feel like. The reason is if there's a lot of people it may be all smoked by the time it comes back around.

Just as one would serve coffee, cocktails, food to your guests first, it's courtesy to give greens to your guest unless you have some elaborate setup that requires you to spark the joint or run a vaporizer or what have you.

All of this stuff varies by region, locality etc, including the language used. I got totally confused once in Pittsburgh because of this, as well as when I moved for college, which wasn't that far from where I lived before that. A comprehensive guidebook would quite possibly be the greatest travel guide ever written.
posted by IvoShandor at 10:40 PM on September 21, 2010

Anyone have any experience with using pot for pain management?
posted by Evilspork at 10:51 PM on September 21, 2010

Existential pain, yes.
posted by Burhanistan at 11:08 PM on September 21, 2010 [4 favorites]

CURRENT US PRICE INDEX: $344 (last month: $359; year to date: $358)
CURRENT KIND INDEX ($350+ PER OZ): $405 ($418, $426)
CURRENT MIDS INDEX ($150–$349 PER OZ): $279 ($281, $278)
CURRENT SCHWAG INDEX ($1–$149 PER OZ): $110 ($95, $96)

via?

In other news ...
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:22 PM on September 21, 2010 [1 favorite]

For those with their head in their asses about the practice of immature buds being 'tipped' with liquid meth, you can also rest ASSURED a grower has never quickly harvested and then sold buds that the grower took an ENTIRE FUCKING YEAR to plan, plant and grow that were sprayed with Paraquat by a DEA helicopter two days before harvest. Either.
posted by Muirwylde at 12:59 AM on September 22, 2010

One citation.
posted by Muirwylde at 1:17 AM on September 22, 2010

Another.
posted by Muirwylde at 1:34 AM on September 22, 2010

A third.
posted by Muirwylde at 1:37 AM on September 22, 2010

I really want to despond to that comment really early on in the thread where I am the Walrus claims 1/4oz would last him through ONE PARTY with 4 other people. DUDE, YOU SMOKE SOME SHIT WEED! alternatively, DUDE, YOUR TOLERANCE IS WAY TOO HIGH
posted by tehloki at 3:33 AM on September 22, 2010

The first citation is a list of slang terms hosted by the DEA. The third says police have actuallly never seized any, just "hearing about it on the street." and the second is speculatively based on doctors saying they are seeing more staying out pot smokers.

And all of them are pretty old.

Pretty weak tea, so to speak.
posted by fourcheesemac at 3:38 AM on September 22, 2010

Oh, and those are like the first 3 hits on google for "meth laced weed."

But nowhere in the first few hundred hits do I see any examples of such pot actually being seized. The vast majority of hits are forums where worried stoners ask about this subject.


Best you got? Might as well post a YouTube link for "Reefer Madness."

It is urban legend. I'm sure it's been tried somewhere but it is not a serious concern.
posted by fourcheesemac at 3:44 AM on September 22, 2010

Oh, and every source you cite: DEA, cops, and all, has a reason to lie or exaggerate about pot.

Legalization doesn't just put drug dealers out of business. It's gonna suck for cops used to really easy money locking up harmless stoners and seizing assets.
posted by fourcheesemac at 3:47 AM on September 22, 2010

I kept thinking about this, and it made even less sense. By weight, meth is far more expensive than pot. Any experienced pot smoker would both taste the lacing and feel the different effects immediately and that dealer would be short a customer. There have been -- over years now -- no reported deaths caused by just smoking pot in the US at least, which would not be true if pot were routinely laced with anything stronger or neurotoxic. Getting caught with meth is far more risky than getting caught with pot, so any dealer who carried around meth-laced product would be risking much more jail time. Meth and pot have completely different highs, mirror opposites for most people. And charges that pot is laced/cut/adulterated/poisoned go back to the earliest days of reefer madness hysteria in the early 20th c., and are a standard issue lie of law enforcement and anti-drug crusaders among a whole arsenal of scary untruths they peddle. I have never encountered obviously adulterated pot in my lifetime -- that's about 30+ years of experience with the stuff. And finally, what a fine excuse for someone busted for doing something stupid while stoned on meth to claim he didn't know he was consuming meth and thought he was just smoking pot. Sounds exactly like the kind of thing a meth user would make up when confronted by cops or friends.

Like I said, it may happen. Some stoner somewhere has no doubt combined these drugs. I'm sure people have messed around with pot/acid, pot/adderall, pot/pcp, etc. But there is *no* widespread problem out there for which there is *any* real evidence -- you cited the three weak things one can actually find on google amidst the hundreds of "this is a hoax" sources.

Worry about psychological dependency (because there is no evidence whatsoever that pot is physically addictive). Worry about stoned driving (although there is some contrary evidence that says pot has far less effect on driving skills than alcohol -- or texting while driving). Worry about the effects of smoking over time (although there's no evidence pot hurts your lungs in the quantities most people could even manage to smoke). Worry, even, about pesticides used by illegal growers, of course.

But worry about meth in your pot? Pure fantasy.
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:04 AM on September 22, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm sure people have messed around with pot/acid,

Not if they have any idea what they're doing - it'd take a pretty significant volume of acid to soak a bud, just to have it totally broken down and destroyed by exposure to heat when you tried to smoke it.

Smoking pot a few minutes after dosing is another thing entirely, and highly recommended, but combining the two into a single delivery method would involve some rather bizarre machinations.
posted by FatherDagon at 7:29 AM on September 22, 2010

The first citation is a list of slang terms hosted by the DEA. The third says police have actuallly never seized any, just "hearing about it on the street."

I was part of a band way back when whose name (I won't drop it here) happened to sound like a cool new psychedelic drug. This is a connection we consciously exploited, dropping various hints in various weird ways (mainly posters and leaflets left in strategically weird locations). Anyway, we never amounted to anything, except our name did make it into a rather lurid Rolling Stone article about all the scary new psychedelic and other drugs that were on the street in San Francisco (early 90s, Ecstasy onset).

So yeah, trust "the street". It always knows what it's talking about.
posted by philip-random at 9:17 AM on September 22, 2010

Would you like to see this LOLcat sing trololo?

Every time I so much as see the word "trololo" I get a wicked "Man in the Box" earworm.
posted by norm at 11:48 AM on September 23, 2010

I say this, not for my fellow thread readers, who are obviously in agreement with at least some of the following but for someone who may come here via some odd Google search and see an argument happening and think there might actually be two sides to it:

There is no such thing as liquid meth.* Yes, people inject meth. But it's the same meth that you smoke or snort, just dissolved in sterile (hopefully) water. People who were going to shoot up meth have been known to dissolve meth in water to take small quantities with them on airplanes, hidden in shampoo bottles and such (this is, of course, before flying with liquids became a problem), but those people aren't giving away free samples or accidentally spraying pot plants with it, and the link above with it on dried paper makes my brain hurt about 1000 different ways from wrong.

Liquid meth isn't a "well it's possible -- just because you don't know about it doesn't mean it's real" thing; it is not a thing. If people were to spray meth dissolved in sterile water on a pot plant for some stupid reason, it would not somehow magically transfer through to your bud. Even if by some weird freaky event your pot actual had tiny, tiny meth crystals on it (and again, we're getting close to magic here) - or crystals crushed into powder - by lighting it on fire, it would disappear as soon as your flame hit it. Gone. You might smell some weird shit, but you wouldn't get high (from the meth) and your pot having been in close contact with methamphetamine wouldn't make you somehow fall under meth's evil spell.

Don't get me wrong - meth is plenty fucking evil. All on its own. But misinformation and outright lies that get excused because "all drugs are bad...mmmkay" is pretty close to evil itself because wrong information, even if done with the best intentions, lead to all kinds of wrong equivalencies. For example, I have no doubt that the gateway drug concept has led to more people going from marijuana to harder stuff than marijuana itself ever did. And I say that as a non**-pot smoker.

* To be totally and completely honest (something you're probably not going to find when you do searches online or from the DEA), when heated in glass with a torch (not a flame from your Bic) you would use methamphetamine itself is a liquid for about a second -- that's the point where you smoke it. But as soon as you stop heating it, it recrystallizes almost immediately.

** Highly irregular and the older I get the more irregular it becomes.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:56 PM on September 23, 2010 [2 favorites]