This is ridiculous ... not that I'm an expert or anything but $20 is the cost of a gram. How is this guy going to claim to have research without trying to buy it himself? This article is completely bunk. Compelling title since people love to discuss the economics of drugs but the premise is way off.
Also as someone who used to know the economics of weed, there are nickel, dime, and dub ($20) bags. This is for people like high school kids and street drug dealers that sell at this level though. I would add that you can probably buy dime bags from the hippies in Golden Gate Park SF, but that feels much more like a crack deal than some legitimate transaction.
You can also grab a quarter (1/4 of an ounce) but it's not going to cost you $25 ... it will cost you more than $100.
I love how this was good enough to be published in the Financial times even though it was wrong. There's a reason that the Freakonomics guys went and lived with the crack dealers: they wanted actual research, not second hand rumors.
Except that you're also wrong. Pricing varies from region to region, and I've heard from a friend that $10 is a gram here, and a quarter is much less than $100. Lookn up online discussions about the price of weed. You'll see a good variety of answers. Quality also matters in pricing, which adds another element to it.
Also as someone who used to know the economics of weed, there are nickel, dime, and dub ($20) bags. This is for people like high school kids and street drug dealers that sell at this level though. I would add that you can probably buy dime bags from the hippies in Golden Gate Park SF, but that feels much more like a crack deal than some legitimate transaction.
You can also grab a quarter (1/4 of an ounce) but it's not going to cost you $25 ... it will cost you more than $100.
I love how this was good enough to be published in the Financial times even though it was wrong. There's a reason that the Freakonomics guys went and lived with the crack dealers: they wanted actual research, not second hand rumors.