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A lot of states have made legal marijuana prohibitively expensive. The only black markets for weed in Oregon are for minors, because you can buy an ounce of pretty good quality stuff for $70.

Politicians who lost the war to keep a harmless drug illegal try and price out people from consuming it.

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As a resident of Colorado, I can confirm this. In Colorado, medical marijuana is taxed differently from recreational marijuana sales. Even generally recreational users are always trying to figure out a way to get a medical card, because the taxes are extremely high. Colorado charges a 15% excise tax for sales from cultivator to retailer, and then an additional 15% tax at point of sale. Additionally, for various reasons, recreational shops tend to charge more as a base rate than medical shops. The outcome is that on average recreational products are actually 50-60% higher in cost by the time the customer pays vs medical products, for identical underlying goods (e.g. same strain, weight, quality, producer).

The flip side is that taxation of recreational usage in Colorado has been very good for the state budget. I remember several years where the taxes collected were high enough that the state increased income tax refunds, and in one case to 100%, because Colorado has tax income caps and must return tax income overages. The reality though is, if you're dependent on a drug and there's a cheaper way to get it, you'll do that. And in fact, a lot of people in Colorado still home-grow and trade/sell with friends, because purchasing the product through a dispensary is too expensive.

The average price in Colorado for an ounce of high quality marijuana is about $100 /before tax/, which makes it around $115 after tax vs Oregon's $70 at point of sale, that's a significant difference in pricing.

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