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Google Maps visualization of marijuana prices, with over 800+ entries so far
- coryl 16y agoWorking on this project with a friend. Any suggestions?
- jRoden 16y agoThe problem with compiling an overall $/oz. amount is that, generally, prices go down as quantity goes up. The data will be skewed if a lot of people are reporting $50 eighths (400/oz.) and the price for an ounce from the same dealer is, say, $300. Maybe track the different amounts separately?
- coryl 16y agoExactly, we aren't incorporating the volume discount when we scale up smaller quantities of weed. This is because we really just don't know what the average margins of sales between different quantities. We could display the averages in each quantity, but it would lack enough sample size. Plus having one nice round number is easier to visualize. I think the final .oz average probably within +/-10% accuracy.
- dgc 16y agopublishing the standard deviation on the normalized price would go a long way towards making the numbers more useful. If you get enough samples you can do a simple fit to attempt to quantify the discount rate.
- lmkg 16y agoData scrubbing. For example: California: High Quality: $359.19 / oz. (n=72) Medium Quality: $300 / oz. (n=17) Low Quality: $648 / oz. (n=2) <-- ??? The low quality stuff is worth more than twice as much as the medium? The crazy numbers for low quality are on account of one wonky data point ($976/oz). There were also some obviously bunk ones like $1/oz, which someone probably did pay from a friend, but that doesn't reflect street value. It's hard to do this in an automated fashion, though, at least until you have a good amount of data. A good place to start would be automatically flagging figures more than 2 standard deviations from the (local) mean, and hand-curating those. Keep track of "bad" data points, and as you find patterns you can add filters.
- coryl 16y agoYep, we haven't gotten around to filtering and cleaning up entries, but we'll definitely look to eliminate big outliers from our average calculations. A lot of people have been pointing on the same thing you've been pointing out lol. That's why we added the n= for the time being.
- Alex3917 16y agoThe price for the High Quality doesn't make much sense either even with tons of data points. According to Yelp the most expensive dispensary in SF is Divinity Tree, and I think their onces are $360. Considering that basically everywhere else in the state should be cheaper than this I don't see how the average could possibly be 360.
- coryl 16y agoNot everyone can get licenses to purchase from dispensaries, so a dispensary's price is not necessarily market price. Theres still a "black" market so to speak; of people who buy it illegally.
- Alex3917 16y agoYes, but the black market price is usually cheaper than the dispensary price.
- coryl 16y agoNot entirely true. If I can't get a license, I have to buy off the black market; meaning I have to go through dealers who traffic under the risk of arrest and prosecution. That creates the premium price that drugs have today, everywhere. Thus it makes sense for a drug dealer to charge more than the price available legally, because buyers without licenses have no choice. However, there are also demand and supply side things going on that we might not know about that is affecting the price.
- jrockway 16y ago
- evgen 16y agoI think one problem you will run into is that you are attempting to compare prices while also keeping fuzzy distinctions like quality. Alabama has cheaper "high quality" weed than California? That tells me that what would sell for $400/oz in CA is not available at any price in AL. If you cut out the user-supplied quality metric or figure out some way to try to normalize this across the samples (e.g. ask submitters if they have purchased in other states and how they would rank this purchase against that past purchase) you would probably get better useful data.
- coryl 16y agoIndeed, quality is highly subjective and relative to product available on the market. I have a personal hypothesis that most average smokers can't distinguish high quality vs medium quality. I'm not sure how practical it is to get users to try and compare product quality from different locations; the sample size would probably be very low because most people buy and consume where they live.
- evgen 16y agoTrue. I was mostly suggesting that you should drop the quality distinction but trying to leave you an out in case there was some clever way to normalize this. I think that in general people would find an accurate average more useful because then they could perform any quality discounting on their own using the known basepoint.
- dgc 16y agoI actually think there could be some objective quality measures, but you would need someone with a fair range of experience to judge. Perhaps number of buds per ounce in the mix or a simple color/image chart to select from?
- c23gooey 16y agoa simpler distinction would be whether the marijuana is outdoor or hydroponically grown
- sv123 16y agoI only ever buy a single gram, but can't put that in. Also what if vendors start putting prices they pay growers, and dispensaries enter prices from vendors, and customers use prices from dispensaries... The same batch of herb will be many different prices, possibly need some way to distinguish a "type" of price that is being entered. That would make the data more valuable also for dispensaries shopping around different vendors, etc. Of course that is sticking to the "legal" weed market.
- what 16y agoFeel sorry for the people paying $400/oz, getting ripped off. EDIT: ... don't be mad at me, be mad at your dealer.
- dgc 16y agoI know very little about the price of weed, but I think some of the data has to be bogus: $1000 for 5 grams in Palo Alto? When I lived there all my neighbors had their "ten plants" growing in their back yards, nobody I knew who smoked ever _paid_ for weed.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- hebejebelus 16y agoWhile I'm more than a little anti-marijuana, I commend you on your use of tech in ways they weren't intended to be used. Original hacking. ;)
- cryptoz 16y agoWhy are you anti-marijuana? Are you anti-beer and anti-coffee too, and if not I'd be curious to hear your reasoning! Also, out of interest, where are you from?
- hebejebelus 16y agoNot sure just how far I want to get into this, because most of my points are admittedly indefensible and most of it just stems from a long hatred of smoking. I was anti-beer for a very, very long time as well (until virtually six months ago), though coffee has always been my vice. I'm Irish, and I'm fairly young (approaching twenty soon, which puts me very far in the minority on these matters. ;)) Mostly, I simply don't see the point. I understand the need to socialise and the like, and the need for friends. However, I think that if I make friends when I'm in a different state of mind to my ordinary, day-to-day thinking, then are they really my friends? Furthermore, I don't like having a crutch. I don't think anybody truly needs to get drunk/high/drink a pot of coffee in the morning to get them through the day. If you do, you've probably made some bad decisions and you should think long and hard about where you're going in life. I also simply hate the stoner mentality. Why the hell would you want to just coast through life? I mean, make something of yourself! Make your parents proud! I know, however, that I'm painting a large number of people with the same brush here. I know that many of the people who smoke weed sometimes aren't stoners. I have almost no problems with people who smoke weed every once in a while, just as I don't have problems with people who go to the pub sometimes or with people who drink the odd coffee. I do sincerely have problems with people who smoke pot every other night, or every time they hang out with people, or every time they get even a little stressed. (Medical marijuana doesn't count, though, provided naturally that it's actually necessary. I'm not going to judge people when they're in huge amounts of pain.) The thing is, though, that past this little speech, I can barely defend my arguments. It's not that I just don't get it (though that's definitely a factor), it's also that I simply have an irrational hatred of smoking. Go easy on me in your rebuttal, I'm only meek. :)
- coryl 16y agoOh yeah, I should mention I posted this on HN a little more than a week ago. Combined with Reddit, you guys helped us get close to 500 entries in a couple days. With the data and suggestions, we were able to map it out on googlemaps. We added metric units (grams), manual location selection, and region pages. Thanks HN!
- roel_v 16y agoCould you add an option to choose which quantity you want to see prices in? Seeing x$/gram next to y$/ounce doesn't really help much. Doing the conversion to a user-selectable base unit for all entries on one screen shouldn't be hard (I know that it would be distorted because of quantity discounts, maybe you can add an option to only show entries within a certain quantity bracket). Plus, the heatmap request above would be nice. Thirdly, the page says that there were entries in my area (in Europe) but the map doesn't show any.
- VMG 16y agoI second these suggestions. Nice idea indeed.
- roel_v 16y agoAlso, if you're soliciting feature suggestions ;) , as you get more data over time it would be nice to be able to view price evolution, and on a micro scale maybe even relate it to market events like a big plantation bust. It would be really cool if you could deduce hard numbers on price elasticity, using the normalized amount of entries over a time period as a proxy for supply. Also you don't seem to track 'legal' vs 'illegal' sales? They're two very different markets I think, but maybe they do overlap. Does anyone know of any research on this? It seems like a very novel field, considering that the emergence of legal medical marijuana use in the US is a recent development. Maybe (I'll stop suggesting after this ;) ) you can also track a difference between 'place bought' and 'place consumed' or 'place of residence'. It would be interesting to graph cross-border drug tourism patterns in Western Europe.
- kunjaan 16y agohttp://www.webehigh.com/city/detail.php?CITYID=2205 http://www.webehigh.com/city/detail.php?CITYID=2205 I visited my home country after 2 years and it has gotten better. You can actually rent out a nice room in an innocuous house. You can order your choice of movies and music. For $10, you can get weed that will last 2 for a month. Come to Nepal man. Seriously.
- mahmud 16y agopot tourism is not what Nepal needs, man. Years ago it was old men and misfits that smoked charas; now you have kids learning the tricks from tourists :-/
- ahin 16y agoThat's it, I'm moving to Canada.
- enjo 16y agoIt'd be really interesting to see this break down by "legal" vs "illegal" purchases. For instance, in Colorado (where "medical" marijuana is widely available for whoever wants it) is it cheaper or more expensive with a card?
- amirmc 16y agoLooks like there could be some interesting arbitrage opportunities in the north east USA. I'd be really interested to see data from Europe (but hopefully that will take care of itself over time).
- code_duck 16y agoHa, yes, there are but attempting to exploit this market tends to result in an arrest while driving through Missouri or something.
- coryl 16y agoImporting from Canadian grow ops is probably the name of the game along border states. Retail price is ~$200/oz in Ontario vs ~$400/oz in New York. Oddly enough however, British Columbia and Washington state have similar prices. WSH either has much more lax laws, or is being flooded by BC production? Wonder whats going on there...
- muhfuhkuh 16y agoStrangely, it's the availability of beasters in Vancouver coupled with the absolute dominance of Vietnamese immigrant grow-ops in PacNW[1] (Portland and Seattle) that have contributed to the downward pricing pressure, not so much the laws (as, TX weed is abundant and cheap but _DO NOT_ get caught with weed in TX). [1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16628918 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1662891...
- coryl 16y agoOur price average for Texas is around $450+/oz (save for the skewed average by some fake submissions). Not exactly cheap, but makes sense if getting caught is costly.
- harshpotatoes 16y agoWe have lots of national parks forests in Washington, and BC is very similar terrain. I have a feeling pot is grown on both sides of the border. (I know lots of pot is grown within the state: see pot siezed near twisp,yakima,etc.).And Im sure lots of pot is probably smuggled across the olympic peninsula. So more than likely, pot is just very easily attainable on both sides of the border, equalizing prices.
- jim_dot 16y agoSeems like a lot of people are stoned when entering prices. $10 for 10 grams?
- CrLf 16y agoFor a "Global Index", asking for the price of an ounce will stump people outside the USA. How much is an ounce again?
- ahin 16y agoThere is also an option for grams.
- Groxx 16y agoMan, grahams sound awesome.
- scotth 16y agoIn Canada people use ounces, fractions of ounces and grams to measure weight in the weed context.
- uxp 16y agoAn ounce is ~28.3 grams, and an eighth is ~3.5 grams. For the most part, the US Imperial units are just division units when it comes to marijuana sales, not actually measurements. When it's sold, it is more commonly weighed using the metric scale than imperial units inside the United States.
- zephyrfalcon 16y agoNitpick: Apparently the visualization wasn't made by or for colorblind people... all the dollar signs on the map look pretty much the same to me. (No, I'm not stoned. :-)
- andrewingram 16y agoI really wish I could tell the colours apart, I would prefer if it were plotted as an actual heat map rather than just a bunch of dollar symbols.
- Groxx 16y agoNot much of a nitpick, IMO. It's a pretty big oversight. Curiosity: does any easy color-cycling software for monitors exist for color-blind people? It seems this could be solved by just rotating the color wheel until you can see the difference (even if the result is fugly).
- callahad 16y agoI've heard good things about eyePilot: http://www.colorhelper.com/ http://www.colorhelper.com/ They have a flash demo explaining what it does at http://www.colorhelper.com/tutorial.php http://www.colorhelper.com/tutorial.php
- Groxx 16y agoThat's a decent solution, and one of the nicer demos I've seen in quite a while. Having a floating window makes a fair bit of sense from a programming / UI standpoint. Makes me want to make it system-wide, however. As useful as a floating window is, unless it has a way of supporting click-through (which is still guaranteed to be more cumbersome than not having a floating window), you still can't interact with things properly. Hmmmm... you've given me yet another thing to add to my list of things to program. I think I'm thankful for that, though I'm definitely thankful for the link :)
- qq66 16y agoI'm not colorblind and they are still not instantly distinguishable.
- cbare 16y agoNice! What other black markets could benefit from this kind of visibility into pricing? ....hmmm, OK, maybe let's not go there.
- points 16y agoWhat a disgusting website. Well done for encouraging drug use.
- coryl 16y agoWay to be ignorant of fact and close minded. Also, there's absolutely nothing about the site that encourages drug use at all. Implicitly or explicitly. Feel free to show me if you find something that does.
- points 16y agoThe fact it exists encourages it. It's a shame there seems to be such a big pothead culture in the US. Very odd how some really clever people choose to rot their brains with drugs.
- jonknee 16y agoWhat does cleverness have to do with drugs? Many of the most brilliant people who have ever lived were drug users. Since this is HN, a good example is Steve Jobs. He credits LSD as one of the most important things he ever did.
- points 16y agoYou think Steve Jobs is clever??? :/ You must be on drugs. Saying something was important isn't the same as saying it's beneficial or good. For example, some people often say the following: "The best thing that happened for me was getting put in jail" "The best thing that happened for me was getting thrown out by my wife" That doesn't mean people should take that as advice.
- blhack 16y agoWhat is the typical dosage for marijuana? Like, how much would a casual user be using for one smoking session? This seems like an incredibly expensive hobby. It also appears that somebody is kindof spamming the site. The top three entires that came up when I loaded the page were $999 - 5 Grams - Scottsdale
- cloudwalking 16y ago1/4th gram will get you very high. Most people buy in 1/4th or 1/8th oz amounts. In comparison to alcohol, smoking marijuana is a very inexpensive way to have fun.
- mcbarry 16y agoDepends on your tolerance and method of usage, but I use it 2-3 times a week, using a vaporiser, and go through ~0.1 grams a session. Due to taxes where I live (Victoria, Australia) it's cheaper than alcohol.
- mr_twj 16y agoA couple of nugs might be typical. 1 oz is a lot of cannabis; it might take a year for a casual user to expend it. So no, your garden variety cannabis is not expensive and is comparably cheaper than alcohol, and much cheaper than pharmaceutical drugs. "The Union" is a decent documentary about cannabis in general, including its distribution and pricing history: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9077214414651731007# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9077214414651731007...
- pavel_lishin 16y agoMy friend usually buys half an ounce to an ounce at a time, and it lasts him anywhere from a month (if there's not much to do but play video games and read) to six months. Cost ranges from $200 to $400, depending on quality. Considering I regularly spend $50 per weekend on drinks, it's an incredibly cheap way to take a vacation from your mind.
- luckyland 16y agoHah. Love that low quality is "not available" in Oregon.
- pavel_lishin 16y agoI'm also surprised by the amount of "high quality" entries in Texas. But then again, the people smoking shwag probably aren't reading hacker news and adding their cost of weed to an online database.
- roel_v 16y agoI have an academic interest in drug trafficking patterns, but I don't know very much about the US situation; however isn't much of the US supply smuggled in over land from Mexico? That would make it quite logical for areas near borders to have high quality supply.
- dhyasama 16y agoI haven't smoked in years because it doesn't agree with me anymore, but when I did, the stuff from Mexico tended to be lower quality. The good stuff was usually local and grown with care. Think industrial versus local produce.
- mcs 16y agoApparently somebody doesn't know how to sanitize input.
- solutionyogi 16y agoLooks like someone hijacked the website with XSS attack.
- coryl 16y agoYep, fixed. The site has gotten way more traffic than we expected it to. *And by fixed, I mean I'm watching over the database with a baseball bat until my programming partner gets home lol.
- davidmurphy 16y agoI don't want this sort of content on Hacker News. :(
- points 16y agoAgreed. Unfortunately we seem to be the minority amongst pot head idiots.
- ulvund 16y agoLooks like it is US/Canada only so far, even though it says global =)
- mambodog 16y agoDown the bottom of the page it's showing me info for Perth, Western Australia, but none of that is plotted on the map.