Marijuana

[Rich]

High prices got you down? That should change soon...

Colorado: Price Of Legal Marijuana Soars With High Demand

By Steve Elliott
Hemp News

On the first day of legal recreational marijuana sales in Colorado, retailers were selling top-shelf cannabis at prices up to $400 per ounce, not including taxes, according to reports.

"I think people were a little bit surprised at the price," said Rachel Gillette, executive director of Colorado NORML, reports Erik Ortiz at NBC News.

Medical marijuana patients, who have been able to buy their cannabis for medicinal use at Colorado dispensaries since 2010, are used to paying around $250 an ounce, according to Gillette.

Colorado doesn't impose any price restrictions on marijuana, leaving the market open to supply and demand. One shop was selling marijuana on Wednesday for $70 an eighth-ounce -- a markup of $25 from the previous day's price of $45, reports The Associated Press.

"It's a new industry; it's a new market," Gillette said "I think things will work themselves out in a few years. We saw the same thing happen with the medical marijuana industry before the prices came down."

Industry observers also pointed out that while prices may be initially high in Colorado's legal marijuana market, along with that high price comes arrest protection.

A Colorado State University report released last April predicted retail prices ending up around $185 an ounce.

"My sense is that competition will eventually arise ... and costs will fall below what the black market wants," said Phyllis Resnick, lead economist at Colorado State's Colorado Futures Center.

Medical marijuana patients shouldn't be affected by the high recreational pot prices and the long lines to buy it, according to Mason Tvert, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. Colorado had the good sense to keep the two systems separate, unlike Washington state, where medical marijuana is being "rolled into" the highly taxed recreational market under legalization measure Initiative 502.

Medical cannabis isn't subjected to the special sales tax put on recreational marijuana; there are also dispensaries devoted to medical marijuana only, so patients shouldn't have to wait for hours to buy it.

Meanwhile, law enforcement in areas bordering Colorado are complaining.

It's "almost like looking at a scene in a Cheech and Chong movie," claimed Sheriff Dave O'Malley of Albany County, Wyoming, "where they would pull over a car for speeding and the windows would all come down and the smoke would come billowing out of the cars."

http://www.hemp.org/news/content/colorado-price-legal-marijuana-soars-high-demand