Eddie & Egor go to Colorado

[matty223]

Plan to go in 2016 .....(cannot wait) - hopefully more smoker friendly accommodation by then....

Last time in Boulder - I got picked up by the police for "jaywalking" - mind you that was in 1984 or so - the officer was really decent about it .......

jaywalking lmao,, watch out they might call sway out these days for jaywalking

[mattyp]

Great report with some awesome pictures

[vinyl]

wow! thanks

[Willjay]

Thanks for sharing, looking forward to day 3

[notsofasteddie]

Day 3: Part II

After checking out the capitol and other sights, It's time for another visit to the Yard House



One more round before we hit the road



Hmmmm, I wonder what we will find in here



Early indications that this is Eddie and Egor's kind of place. Starbuds was the friendliest of the Denver dispensaries. The budtender really went out of his way to describe his wares. You could tell that he loved his job.



Choices and



More Choices



Here is one of the surprises that Colorado had to offer. A lot of the dispensaries had no traditional hash having replaced it with shatter, wax, oil, etc. However, Starbuds had some Black Afghani. The budtender said they had a couple of older, regular customers who preferred it so they made a point to keep it in stock.



Next on the agenda is this



Any guesses as to what is behind these doors?



Nope, not a dispensary; It's a distillery. Another of my favorite words that begin with "D"

Tried the coffee liqueur, quite tasty! The bourbon was good and the vodka was too, but the star was their Maryland Rye, limited release and available in November. I've found one of my Christmas presents!


We're back at the hotel. The sun is setting, but time for a nightcap.



Word to the wise: The Dixie Elixir goes better with Vodka. Lesson learned

Day 4 to follow

[Adamster]

Nice report!
Nice American greed 20$ a gram (what a joke)

[Papi]

Great report, and pictures but prices are utter shit:) I've read some article today that prices of weed in dispensaries will be getting severely down, but judging from pics, it ain't happening now.

[Uncle Ron]

Keep the information and pictures coming.
Thanks for taking the time.

[notsofasteddie]

Great report, and pictures but prices are utter shit:) I've read some article today that prices of weed in dispensaries will be getting severely down, but judging from pics, it ain't happening now.

Part of the reason that the prices are what they are in Colorado. Still unlike Amsterdam where prices are going up; Prices in Colorado are coming down. The prices in Boulder were better than those in Denver. At The Farm, grams ranged from $12 to $18 depending on the strain.

State Sales and Local Tax Rates:

The state sales tax rate on all tangible personal property, including marijuana, is 2.9%. Local tax rates can be found in Revenue Online. Look for View Local Sales Tax Rates under Other Services. (These taxes are charged on the final consumer purchase price.)

Marijuana Sales Tax Rate:

Consumers will also pay a 10% sales tax on all retail sales of retail marijuana and marijuana-infused products in the state. (Charged on the final consumer purchase price.)

Medical Marijuana Tax Rates:

Medical marijuana is not subject to the 15% retail marijuana state excise tax (included in the price of the product). Consumers will pay the 2.9% state sales tax plus any local sales taxes on the final consumer purchase.

State Marijuana Excise Tax Rate:

Retail marijuana is subject to a 15% excise tax on the average market rate of retail marijuana. The excise tax is based on the average market rate for flower, trim and immature plants.
•1 pound of retail marijuana flower with an average market rate of $1,868 will result in excise tax of $280.20 ($ 1,868 x 0.15)
•1 pound of retail marijuana trim with an average market rate of $370 will result in $55.50 excise tax
•1 retail marijuana immature plant with an average market rate of $8 will result in $1.20 excise tax.

EXAMPLE: Mary wants to buy one ounce of retail marijuana flower for $200.00. Mary will not see the excise tax on retail marijuana flower because it is included in the purchase price. Mary will pay state sales taxes of $25.80 for the retail marijuana flower. ($200 multiplied by the sales tax rate of 12.9%). This is the state sales tax of 2.9% on all tangible personal property (which includes marijuana) AND the state retail marijuana sales tax of 10%. Mary will also pay local sales taxes. The amount of local sales taxes will depend on the location of the store where the purchase is made.


colorado government

[RvanSteensel]

lol 8 dollars a gram for gruis

[kingbee]

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[kingbee]

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[notsofasteddie]

lol 8 dollars a gram for gruis

Yeah, I thought Colorado was supposed to be cheap in comparison with Cali, but those prices in this thread are a blatant rip off! I read from other sources that decent strains can be had for 8 dollars a gram, never mind bottom-of-the-range 'gruis' lol

You're forgetting the difference between medical and recreational and black market!

Medical Marijuana is Still the Best Deal on Pot in Colorado


Jars of different strains of marijuana at Denver Kush on Jan. 1, 2014.
Seth McConnell / The Denver Post via Getty Images

By Walt Hickey

Four months into legal recreational marijuana in Colorado, the market for medical cannabis is still by far the most cost-effective way to purchase pot in the state, a FiveThirtyEight analysis has found.

Colorado legalized the sale of recreational marijuana in 2012, setting the stage for the first open recreational marijuana economy in the United States. The first sales of recreational cannabis began this year. The medical marijuana economy had been established in Colorado for several years already,1 and has continued to be robust.

To see how prices compare across the two markets, I looked at data provided by WeedMaps,2 a site that posts locations, menus and prices of recreational and medical cannabis for sale in legal areas. The data set comprises 19,484 cannabis flower prices from 814 Colorado medical dispensaries starting in February 2013 and 1,940 cannabis flower prices from 104 Colorado recreational dispensaries, which opened Jan. 1, 2014. I found that at every price point, medical marijuana is cheaper than recreational pot.

There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary ones are an unexpected decrease in supply in these first few months after recreational marijuana legalization and a series of excise and sales taxes levied by the state of Colorado and the City and County of Denver.3

While it’s still too early to make generalizations about the success of the recreational regime in Colorado, some interesting trends emerged from my analysis of the marijuana pricing curve.

Cannabis flowers are sold by weight, typically in five quantities. Customers above the age of 21 can purchase as little as a gram of marijuana and as much as an ounce at retail stores.4 (There are 28.35 grams in an ounce.) Typically, there’s a discount when cannabis is purchased in larger quantities.

Below are the median prices of medical and recreational marijuana in Colorado. At smaller quantities, the price difference is stark: An eighth of an ounce of recreational cannabis is about 50 percent more expensive than an eighth of an ounce of medical cannabis.


hickey-marijuana-median-price

Looking at the unit price, we observe that the median per-gram price is substantially lower for medical cannabis. For quantities larger than a gram, the median recreational price per gram ranges between $7.00 and $8.50, while the median medical price per gram is consistently about $5.60.


hickey-marijuana-median-gram

To understand these price differentials, I spoke to Kayvan Khalatbari, co-founder of Denver Relief, a marijuana dispensary. Khalatbari is also a principal at Denver Relief Consulting, which advises new and existing marijuana businesses in both the medical and recreational markets.

Khalatbari identified two main reasons for the pricing distinction. The first is the additional taxes levied on recreational marijuana. Medical marijuana sold in Denver carries a sales tax of 7.72 percent. Recreational marijuana carries that tax plus a 10 percent marijuana state sales tax and 3.5 percent marijuana sales tax from the City and County of Denver applied at the point of sale. And that’s on top of a 15 percent excise tax applied when a wholesaler sells cannabis in bulk to a retailer.

But if that were the whole story — taxes make things more expensive, tell your friends — it wouldn’t be particularly interesting. Since the sales taxes are applied at the point of sale, we would only expect that 15 percent excise tax to make a difference between the medical price and the recreational price in this data. Yet we see a price difference of upwards of 30 percent across the board.

The second reason Khalatbari cited is a bottleneck in the recreational market. He said that while the state has awarded more than 300 licenses for recreational businesses, only about 15 to 20 percent have received the necessary local approval. As a result, the vast majority of state-licensed recreational dispensaries aren’t in business yet. In addition, Khalatbari said the industry has been slow to scale up production, as many of the expansions in progress — some marijuana-growing facilities are expanding up to 100,000 square feet in size — have seen delays, coupled with the six-month lead time for cultivating the plants.

There’s also the fact that not all marijuana is grown equal. There are wide disparities in quality that we can observe by looking at pricing percentiles. The marijuana market in Colorado shows strong similarities to the market for beer — there are many different qualities and brands available at many different price points, and a large segment of the consumer population has acquired a taste for a product of a certain quality. For marijuana, this means some firms, including Denver Relief, have become private boutique clubs with capped memberships and substantially higher prices for higher-quality cannabis, while other firms target the broader segment of the consumer and tourist population with low- to mid-grade cannabis, priced accordingly.

The chart below the prices of different quantities of marijuana at the 10th and 90th price percentiles, in addition to median prices, for both medical and recreational cannabis.


hickey-marijuana-gram-comparison

The medical market has a lower and tighter price curve than the brand-new recreational market.

Of particular interest in the recreational marijuana data is the difference between the low and high ends of the market. For example, at the half-ounce level, the 10th percentile price is 40 percent cheaper than the median price, whereas the 90th percentile price is a whopping 90 percent more expensive than the median price. What gives?

Khalatbari volunteered two theories of why this is happening, both of which seem plausible. The first is that the demand for high-quality recreational cannabis is currently exceeding the supply. The second is that many of the recreational cannabis growers, in anticipation of legalization, automated their production process. When that happens, he said, “you’re going to see a degradation in product,” which then means a larger segment of the recreational cannabis market could be of somewhat lower — and thus cheaper — quality.

Some might wonder whether the recreational marijuana is just better than the medical marijuana — or altogether different stuff. However, it does it appear as though the two markets are selling the same products. I pulled the records for Sour Diesel, a popular strain of cannabis essentially around the 75th price percentile on both the recreational and medical side, and looked at the median prices in each market.


hickey-marijuana-sour-diesel

Consumers appear to have noticed that it’s cheaper to purchase medical marijuana. “We’re starting to see more people go and get their medical cards back,” Khalatbari said. “A lot of people ditched them at the end of last year and said, ‘I’m not going to renew, recreational will be here and all will be well,’ but then they’re seeing these higher prices and the lack of product availability.”

Obtaining a medical marijuana card involves some annual costs — typically between $45 and $75 for a doctor’s visit and $15 for the Colorado application fee — but these costs can be made back quickly when factoring in the additional taxes and general price hikes on recreational marijuana. If you’re buying an ounce of marijuana at the median price, you’ll save $60, even before sales taxes, if you go the medical route.

When Colorado passed recreational marijuana legalization, supporters sold it to non-smokers by saying the recreational regime would bring in additional tax revenue. The fact that prices for recreational cannabis are higher due to factors unrelated to direct taxation, and that those prices are turning some recreational users back into medical ones, signals a potential problem for the public coffers.

And given the focus on revenue, it’s interesting that Colorado lowered its medical marijuana application fee from $35 to $15 in mid-December. If the state wanted to incentivize people to pay continual taxes on recreational pot instead of a one-time fee for medical pot, slashing that up-front cost was probably not the best strategy.

The state obviously still cares about collecting taxes, and architects of the marijuana legalization effort both in Colorado and nationally have a vested interest in demonstrating that legal cannabis can be a revenue-generator for states. Since it’s considered fairly easy for a healthy person to obtain a medical marijuana card, recreational prices pushing people back toward medical in the first four months of legal pot in Colorado may not be the best thing for the movement.

It’s far too early to make a conclusive judgment on the industry’s ability to deliver those revenues. Perhaps after the recreational market scales up production, and prices there start to match those in the medical market, consumers will decide that paying the taxes for recreational pot is worth not having to get a cannabis prescription.


fivethirtyeight

[Largefella]

Eddie and Egor freakin' rock!

Loving the travelogue - the pictures are superb...and holy crap - statistical analysis on top of that? Wonder if you can submit this for a Master's credit when you're done?

Keep it coming, please!

[kingbee]

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