When states first began to “experiment” with the legalization of marijuana, lawmakers, state officials, are eager to see how selling legal weed would pan out. On the one hand, naysayers wanted to judge whether the socioeconomic cost of legalization worth the tax dollars. However, a new study in the journal Addiction attempts to shine some light on the legalization of recreational marijuana. More specifically, it shows what can be expected to happen with illicit drug markets in states that pass recreational marijuana laws, and it is interesting, to say the least. Fully legal marijuana, subject to state regulations and taxes, appears to make black market pot products more affordable. Researchers found a 9.2% drop in the price of street weed in places with recreational marijuana laws on the books. In some cases, lower quality bud experienced a price decrease of 19.5%. The “prediction,” as the study calls it, is that marijuana legalization is creating less demand for black market weed and therefore driving down the prices. Still, real life tells us that legalization is fueling the black market in a lot of ways. This is especially true in states like California, where illicit pot operations still outnumber the legal ones.
420 Intel – Marijuana Industry News, 05/31/2021 20:00:00