A key question is whether the legal market will be able to compete with the black market on prices. In this respect having a benchmark of black market prices across the country before legalization should be useful. I downloaded crowd sourced data on marijuana prices from Statistics Canada available at https://surveys-enquetes.statcan.gc.ca/cannabis/ and cleaned it to obtain average and median prices per gram for purchases equal to and less than 10 g and separately for purchases equal to and less than 30 g. The data are from July 1st to October 9th. For comparison purposes I also report 2015-16 weighted price average data from the Parliamentary Budgetary Office .
| Alberta | British Columbia | Atlantic Provinces | Ontario | Quebec | Prairie Provinces | |
| 10 g and less July – October 2018 Statistics Canada | ||||||
| Average Price $ per g | 8.47 | 8.43 | 8.05 | 8.55 | 7.05 | 8.01 |
| Median Price $ per g | 8.57 | 8.57 | 8 | 9 | 6.54 | 8 |
| 30 g and less July – October 2018 Statistics Canada | ||||||
| Average Price $ per g | 7.72 | 7.20 | 7.26 | 7.65 | 6.26 | 7.12 |
| Median Price $ per g | 7.86 | 7.14 | 7.14 | 7.14 | 5.71 | 7.14 |
| Parliamentary Budgetary Office Estimates 2015-16 | ||||||
| Average Price $ per g | 8.73 | 7.70 | 8.46 | 8.64 | 7.31 | 9.99 |
Roughly speaking, prices are comparable across the country with the exception of Quebec, which has lowest prices in the country. This is also the pattern which emerges from the 2015-16 PBO data. Data in the next couple of weeks from provincial cannabis websites will confirm whether legal prices will be comparable to black market prices.
Recent Comments