A reader writes:
I'm not too sure where this reader's numbers came from. I can only guess that the legalish market in California has really driven down the prices of quality product. In less progressive areas of the country, an ounce can be had for about $40 for very low-grade product. For something higher-grade like indoor cultivated quality strains (like the warehouse in question would likely be producing), the price can be from $15 to $40 a gram. Twenty-eight grams to an ounce roughly adds up to $420-$1120.
This may not be the case in Oaksterdam, but anyone looking to rob that warehouse would likely be selling in a black market away from the scene of the robbery, where profit margins would be much higher. It just goes to show that facilitating a black market for this plant product only creates incentives for criminal activities. How many more markets can we afford to surrender to mobsters?
Another writes:
Pot retails for about $300 an ounce IN CALIFORNIA. West Coast pot (I'm from Eugene, Oregon - whaddup!) is famous throughout not just the US but the world. If I take an ounce of medical grade pot, put it in my trunk, and drive it to Texas or the East Coast, I could charge $500 or $600 for the ounce and sell it in hours. So, just pointing out that the economics of pot are a lot more complicated really than either of those first two readers indicated.
However, historically, an ounce of pot has tracked the price of an ounce of gold in some rough way. My friends and I had a running discussion of how crazy that fact was pretty much our entire pot-aware childhoods.
Another:
The dissenter who points out that wholesale pot goes for $200 an ounce while gold sells for $1300 might have a point - but it's fairly limited and fairly disingenuous when long-term pricing (as opposed to Fox News-driven exuberance) is included. Gold has only been at $1300 an ounce for a very short time. During the previous few decades, its price hung somewhere between $200 and $300 an ounce. As this chart shows (pdf), in 2004 it started going up to somewhere between $400 and $600, until exploding in price in recent months.
Another:
By the way, gold is measured in troy weight. From Wikipedia: “At 480 grains, the troy ounce is heavier than the avoirdupois ounce, which weighs 437.5 grains.”
Ah, the collective wisdom of Dish readers.
(Map taken from the crowdsourced site Price Of Weed.)