Google Maps visualization of marijuana prices, with over 800+ entries so far

[zephyrfalcon]

Nitpick: Apparently the visualization wasn't made by or for colorblind people... all the dollar signs on the map look pretty much the same to me.

(No, I'm not stoned. :-)

[Groxx]

Not much of a nitpick, IMO. It's a pretty big oversight.

Curiosity: does any easy color-cycling software for monitors exist for color-blind people? It seems this could be solved by just rotating the color wheel until you can see the difference (even if the result is fugly).

[andrewingram]

I really wish I could tell the colours apart, I would prefer if it were plotted as an actual heat map rather than just a bunch of dollar symbols.

[qq66]

I'm not colorblind and they are still not instantly distinguishable.

[coryl]

Oh yeah, I should mention I posted this on HN a little more than a week ago. Combined with Reddit, you guys helped us get close to 500 entries in a couple days.

With the data and suggestions, we were able to map it out on googlemaps. We added metric units (grams), manual location selection, and region pages. Thanks HN!

[roel_v]

Could you add an option to choose which quantity you want to see prices in? Seeing x$/gram next to y$/ounce doesn't really help much. Doing the conversion to a user-selectable base unit for all entries on one screen shouldn't be hard (I know that it would be distorted because of quantity discounts, maybe you can add an option to only show entries within a certain quantity bracket).

Plus, the heatmap request above would be nice.

Thirdly, the page says that there were entries in my area (in Europe) but the map doesn't show any.

[roel_v]

Also, if you're soliciting feature suggestions ;) , as you get more data over time it would be nice to be able to view price evolution, and on a micro scale maybe even relate it to market events like a big plantation bust. It would be really cool if you could deduce hard numbers on price elasticity, using the normalized amount of entries over a time period as a proxy for supply.

Also you don't seem to track 'legal' vs 'illegal' sales? They're two very different markets I think, but maybe they do overlap. Does anyone know of any research on this? It seems like a very novel field, considering that the emergence of legal medical marijuana use in the US is a recent development.

Maybe (I'll stop suggesting after this ;) ) you can also track a difference between 'place bought' and 'place consumed' or 'place of residence'. It would be interesting to graph cross-border drug tourism patterns in Western Europe.

[enjo]

It'd be really interesting to see this break down by "legal" vs "illegal" purchases. For instance, in Colorado (where "medical" marijuana is widely available for whoever wants it) is it cheaper or more expensive with a card?

[tibbon]

Interestingly enough, California seems really expensive compared to other places.

[blhack]

What is the typical dosage for marijuana? Like, how much would a casual user be using for one smoking session?

This seems like an incredibly expensive hobby.

It also appears that somebody is kindof spamming the site. The top three entires that came up when I loaded the page were $999 - 5 Grams - Scottsdale

[cloudwalking]

1/4th gram will get you very high. Most people buy in 1/4th or 1/8th oz amounts. In comparison to alcohol, smoking marijuana is a very inexpensive way to have fun.

[mr_twj]

A couple of nugs might be typical. 1 oz is a lot of cannabis; it might take a year for a casual user to expend it. So no, your garden variety cannabis is not expensive and is comparably cheaper than alcohol, and much cheaper than pharmaceutical drugs.

"The Union" is a decent documentary about cannabis in general, including its distribution and pricing history: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9077214414651731007...

[mcbarry]

Depends on your tolerance and method of usage, but I use it 2-3 times a week, using a vaporiser, and go through ~0.1 grams a session. Due to taxes where I live (Victoria, Australia) it's cheaper than alcohol.

[CrLf]

For a "Global Index", asking for the price of an ounce will stump people outside the USA. How much is an ounce again?

[scotth]

In Canada people use ounces, fractions of ounces and grams to measure weight in the weed context.

[uxp]

An ounce is ~28.3 grams, and an eighth is ~3.5 grams.

For the most part, the US Imperial units are just division units when it comes to marijuana sales, not actually measurements. When it's sold, it is more commonly weighed using the metric scale than imperial units inside the United States.

[ahin]

There is also an option for grams.

[solutionyogi]

Looks like someone hijacked the website with XSS attack.

[coryl]

Yep, fixed. The site has gotten way more traffic than we expected it to.

*And by fixed, I mean I'm watching over the database with a baseball bat until my programming partner gets home lol.

[coryl]

Working on this project with a friend. Any suggestions?

[lmkg]

Data scrubbing. For example:

  California:
  High Quality: $359.19 / oz. (n=72)
  Medium Quality: $300 / oz. (n=17)
  Low Quality: $648 / oz. (n=2)     <-- ???

The low quality stuff is worth more than twice as much as the medium? The crazy numbers for low quality are on account of one wonky data point ($976/oz). There were also some obviously bunk ones like $1/oz, which someone probably did pay from a friend, but that doesn't reflect street value.

It's hard to do this in an automated fashion, though, at least until you have a good amount of data. A good place to start would be automatically flagging figures more than 2 standard deviations from the (local) mean, and hand-curating those. Keep track of "bad" data points, and as you find patterns you can add filters.

[evgen]

I think one problem you will run into is that you are attempting to compare prices while also keeping fuzzy distinctions like quality. Alabama has cheaper "high quality" weed than California? That tells me that what would sell for $400/oz in CA is not available at any price in AL.

If you cut out the user-supplied quality metric or figure out some way to try to normalize this across the samples (e.g. ask submitters if they have purchased in other states and how they would rank this purchase against that past purchase) you would probably get better useful data.

[jRoden]

The problem with compiling an overall $/oz. amount is that, generally, prices go down as quantity goes up. The data will be skewed if a lot of people are reporting $50 eighths (400/oz.) and the price for an ounce from the same dealer is, say, $300. Maybe track the different amounts separately?

[sv123]

I only ever buy a single gram, but can't put that in. Also what if vendors start putting prices they pay growers, and dispensaries enter prices from vendors, and customers use prices from dispensaries... The same batch of herb will be many different prices, possibly need some way to distinguish a "type" of price that is being entered. That would make the data more valuable also for dispensaries shopping around different vendors, etc. Of course that is sticking to the "legal" weed market.

[jim_dot]

Seems like a lot of people are stoned when entering prices. $10 for 10 grams?

[what]

Feel sorry for the people paying $400/oz, getting ripped off.

EDIT: ... don't be mad at me, be mad at your dealer.

[dgc]

I know very little about the price of weed, but I think some of the data has to be bogus: $1000 for 5 grams in Palo Alto? When I lived there all my neighbors had their "ten plants" growing in their back yards, nobody I knew who smoked ever _paid_ for weed.

[ahin]

That's it, I'm moving to Canada.

[luckyland]

Hah. Love that low quality is "not available" in Oregon.

[pavel_lishin]

I'm also surprised by the amount of "high quality" entries in Texas.

But then again, the people smoking shwag probably aren't reading hacker news and adding their cost of weed to an online database.

[redfloatplane]

While I'm more than a little anti-marijuana, I commend you on your use of tech in ways they weren't intended to be used. Original hacking. ;)

[cryptoz]

Why are you anti-marijuana? Are you anti-beer and anti-coffee too, and if not I'd be curious to hear your reasoning! Also, out of interest, where are you from?

[kunjaan]

http://www.webehigh.com/city/detail.php?CITYID=2205

I visited my home country after 2 years and it has gotten better. You can actually rent out a nice room in an innocuous house. You can order your choice of movies and music. For $10, you can get weed that will last 2 for a month.

Come to Nepal man. Seriously.

[mahmud]

pot tourism is not what Nepal needs, man. Years ago it was old men and misfits that smoked charas; now you have kids learning the tricks from tourists :-/

[amirmc]

Looks like there could be some interesting arbitrage opportunities in the north east USA.

I'd be really interested to see data from Europe (but hopefully that will take care of itself over time).

[coryl]

Importing from Canadian grow ops is probably the name of the game along border states. Retail price is ~$200/oz in Ontario vs ~$400/oz in New York.

Oddly enough however, British Columbia and Washington state have similar prices. WSH either has much more lax laws, or is being flooded by BC production? Wonder whats going on there...

[code_duck]

Ha, yes, there are but attempting to exploit this market tends to result in an arrest while driving through Missouri or something.

[mcs]

Apparently somebody doesn't know how to sanitize input.

[adriand]

They were planning on it and then like, totally forgot.

[cbare]

Nice! What other black markets could benefit from this kind of visibility into pricing? ....hmmm, OK, maybe let's not go there.

[ulvund]

Looks like it is US/Canada only so far, even though it says global =)

[mambodog]

Down the bottom of the page it's showing me info for Perth, Western Australia, but none of that is plotted on the map.

[davidmurphy]

I don't want this sort of content on Hacker News. :(

[points]

Agreed. Unfortunately we seem to be the minority amongst pot head idiots.

[points]

What a disgusting website. Well done for encouraging drug use.

[coryl]

Way to be ignorant of fact and close minded.

Also, there's absolutely nothing about the site that encourages drug use at all. Implicitly or explicitly. Feel free to show me if you find something that does.