A major reason for the spike is Colorado’s decision to “vertically integrate all weed sales, meaning that any licensed pot stores must grow 70 percent of what they sell”:
Colorado, in other words, has adopted the brewpub model, with most of the product being produced on site. Washington, on the
other hand, is something more like a liquor store, with production handled elsewhere. Both come with a fair share of red tape — Washington won’t be opening their retail outlets until spring of this year, so it remains to be seen which will be more resilient in the face of demand.
Nevertheless, growers and advocates seem to understand that cumbersome legislation is the best way to ensure legal marijuana as a lasting Rocky Mountain institution.
“I think this is going to be a slow, controlled, implementation,” says Elliott. “It’s going to take us months — maybe years — to reach the demand that’s out there. And while it’s frustrating that won’t happen faster, the public should be proud of how we are doing this.”
Many of the older customers don’t mind the high prices:
Despite what news stories (like teens dropping out of school because of marijuana use) suggest about the Colorado’s current pot mavens, the people who have been standing in the snow for hours to pay $80 for an eighth of an ounce aren’t kids. They’re [Citizen Jay Daily’s] peers.
“Our customers are grown-ups, adults. They’ll happily spend $80 because it’s not a matter of money, it’s a matter of access,” he says. Some of the people he meets have traveled across the world (“Argentina, Russia, Poland!”) to get here. But a large number are simply traveling back in time. Successful, hardworking parents who—with kids grown and out of the house—are ready to be themselves once more. Or, as Citizen Jay puts it, “come out of the pot closet.”
John McDuling warns that investing “in marijuana stocks is a lot more dangerous than smoking marijuana”:
The sudden explosion of interest in weed stocks even prompted FINRA, Wall Street’s self-regulatory organization, to last week warn investors about the potential for scams and frauds. It noted that some marijuana companies—though it didn’t name them—had been employing well-known tricks used in stock scams, like frequently changing their names and business focus. …
Kleiman bets that prices will plummet eventually:
Legal cannabis will be a commodity, and a cheap one at that. Maybe somebody has a clever branding strategy to make money anyway, but what are the odds you’re going to pick that lucky company to invest in as opposed to the 99 others that are going to go broke when pre-tax retail prices hit $3/gm. for sinse, with concentrates trading at a discount on a per-milligram-THC basis?
The Dish 