When legal recreational marijuana sales began in the Pacific Northwest in 2014, prices were as high as $30 per gram for flower.
“My hope is on my home state of Oregon to ramp up production and bottom-out prices,” I wrote for High Times. “I want to see a $50 legal ounce before 2020, dammit!”
That is exactly what has happened. The picture above is a billboard on the boulevard near my home, Delta-9 House & Studios, here in Portland, Oregon.
You read that right. $5 per eighth – not $5 per gram. We’re talking about a store where you may walk in and purchase a $40 ounce of Oregon-grown cannabis flower.
Russ Belville/High Times
Just eight blocks from my home, there is an electronic billboard for another cannabis shop. It is advertising flower starting at $10 per eighth, up to $24 per eighth.
So, even the top-shelf flower here is coming in at $192 per ounce.
Keep in mind, these are prices that are including 20 percent in taxes. That means the $5 eighth is actually priced three cents less than $4.20.
Russ Belville/High Times
The crashing flower prices also mean cheaper concentrates. That same electronic billboard is advertising shatter starting at $10 per gram.
The crashing price is due to factors you may have learned in Economics 101 – supply and demand.
According to an article in the Bend Bulletin, the state’s cannabis regulatory agency says it has logged over one million pounds of flower grown by licensed growers.
That’s five ounces of weed for every adult in the state. A little over 100,000 pounds were sold in the state’s licensed shops in 2017, so there