High Times started printing weed prices in 1974 so buyers would stop getting fleeced by people who knew the going rate. Trans-High Market Quotations is now a live index at index.hightimes.com, and we want your numbers next.

In the summer of 1974, High Times magazine, under the guidance of its very young editor-in-chief, Ed Dwyer, began printing weed prices submitted by anonymous field informants scattered all over the country. It was an act of rebellion, like the magazine itself. Trans-High Market Quotations also served the noble purpose of letting readers know a little about the quality and price of weed, helping show that marijuana was just another product that could be bought and sold like forks, T-shirts, cars or baby wipes. So what was the big deal if a young woman buying a quarter in Cleveland could see that her dealer had marked it up 100 percent over the going rate in Detroit?

The first issue of Trans-High Market Quotations, from High Times Magazine – Summer 1974

Trans-High Market Quotations came from mailed-in notes from readers and back-channel networks of the people actually doing the buying, and it ran for decades. It was analog crowdsourcing before the term existed, and it was, in the exact, useful and militant sense, a piece of consumer protection established in the vacuum prohibition had created.

That’s why we decided to bring it back. This time, it’s interactive. It runs on daily point-of-sale data from Hoodie Analytics, a cannabis market data and analytics firm, covering 12,000 licensed dispensaries across the country and backed by more than 4,000 direct POS integrations.

So, yeah, something’s changed.

You can now see what an eighth costs in your state, in the state next door and everywhere else with legal retail sales. It updates monthly and, of course, it’s free.

It lives at index.hightimes.com. Go click.

You Can Chip In (Please Do)

As you probably know, weed is not one legal product but 50 different legal frameworks laid across a country. Since April, marijuana held under a state medical license sits in Schedule III, along with FDA-approved products containing marijuana. Everything else, including every gram sold in an adult-use store, is still Schedule I while a federal hearing plays out over whether the rest of it follows.

That’s why the interstate commerce that keeps the price of a gallon of milk within pennies of itself across the map does not exist here. Every legal state is an island, and prices vary a lot.

You’ll notice that the tracker now looks like a tool for shoppers in the 24 states and Washington, D.C. with adult-use programs, and for medical patients in the states without them. It includes enough months of data to show year-over-year information, along with many other fun tools you can play with if you are into data.

But the population of weed consumers in America, and everywhere else in the world, is not represented by dispensary receipts alone, and it never has been. The most consequential piece of cannabis commerce on the planet is still the informal and illegal trade that touches billions of people, and it is precisely the part that legal-data platforms cannot capture.

That’s why we are calling on our community to send us purchase reports.

This is where all of you should step in. The case for price transparency in illegal markets is not complicated. Prohibition creates an information asymmetry between the person who knows the going rate and the person who doesn’t. That gap is the mechanism of exploitation, and every dollar it hides is a dollar transferred from the buyer with less information to the seller with more. Publishing prices closes that gap, just as High Times did in the 1970s. It’s an empowerment tool.

So, please, send us your anonymous purchase reports from illicit markets.

We would love to have information from Texas and, from there, Nicaragua, Argentina, Malaysia, Nigeria and everywhere else.

This is our first build, which the people at Hoodie were very generous in facilitating. They did not hesitate for a moment when we asked them to collaborate.

The next thing we plan to build is the rest of it: the countries where cannabis is illegal, the states where it is decriminalized but not sold openly, the semi-legal social clubs in Barcelona, the coffee shops in Amsterdam, and the delivery networks in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Bangkok and everywhere else where receipts do not exist.

If you bought weed recently, we want to know what you paid: where you bought it, how much you bought, in what form, and at what price. That’s it. The submission takes 30 seconds and joins thousands of others in an aggregated pool. We do not ask for your name, your email or your address, and we publish only aggregate figures, never an individual entry.

One thing worth saying out loud, because our readers are not all in Denver. In much of the world, buying weed still carries real criminal exposure. Use your judgment about where and how you file a report, and skip it if you have any doubt.

What emerges is a picture of the global cannabis market: a month-by-month record of what cannabis actually costs, which we never got to have.

So, if you live outside the U.S., please get ready. And if you are thinking of ways to collaborate, send an email to rolando@hightimes.com.

The Index

The interactive THMQ is the first release. It shows the weighted average price per gram and per eighth by state, updated monthly, sortable, sourced and open to inspection. You can zoom in at the state level, compare prices, and see national and regional averages.

In the coming months, it will add medical and recreational filters and other features.

Submit what you paid at index.hightimes.com/#/submit.

Check what your state is charging at index.hightimes.com.

Disclosure: the Trans-High Market Quotations index is built with point-of-sale data provided by Hoodie Analytics under an editorial partnership. No money changed hands in either direction, and Hoodie has no say over what High Times publishes.

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The legal weed business taught customers to chase the next deal, and independent dispensaries are paying the price.

Twenty percent off flower. Buy two vapes, get the third for a penny. Thirty percent off the entire store until noon. Double loyalty points on Wednesday, unless Thursday’s sale turns out to be better. 

Cannabis retail has become a relentless hunt for the next markdown. In mature markets, falling cannabis prices have made legal weed dramatically more affordable for consumers. They have also left retailers fighting over shoppers who may have no reason to return once the coupon expires. 

Cortney Brown, Marketing Chair at the Cannabis Chamber of Commerce and CMO at cannabis advertising and analytics company MediaJel, believes retailers helped create the problem themselves. 

“I think we’ve trained them,” Brown told High Times. “Consumers love finding value, but they don’t wake up hoping to wait until Friday to buy cannabis. The industry created that behavior by teaching customers that if they wait another day, someone will inevitably offer a better deal.”

The Cannabis Price Wars Were Trained Into Existence

Price compression is not necessarily bad news for the person standing at the register. Lower prices can make legal cannabis accessible to people who were previously priced out, particularly in states where taxes and regulatory costs pushed dispensary weed far above traditional-market prices. 

The problem starts when lower base prices collide with a retail culture built around constant promotions. 

According to Headset’s analysis of cannabis retail margins, average U.S. gross margins fell from 52.6% in 2021 to approximately 42.7% during 2025. That decline has consequences beyond the sales floor. Less gross profit can mean tighter payroll, smaller purchasing budgets, late vendor payments, and less money available for expansion or product development. 

Brown traces the discount spiral to a familiar pattern. Supply increased, markets matured, and competition got nastier. Retailers pulled the fastest lever available. 

“Price compression is really the result of an industry-wide race to solve a long-term problem with short-term tactics,” she said. “Markets matured, supply increased, competition intensified, and retailers understandably reached for the fastest lever they had: discounting.” 

Promotions worked, at least initially. They moved inventory, boosted traffic, and gave customers a reason to choose one shop over another. Then every shop started speaking the same language. 

“The problem is that when every retailer follows the same playbook, discounting stops being a differentiator and becomes the expectation,” Brown said. “Eventually, the conversation shifted from ‘Why should I shop here?’ to ‘Who’s offering 30% off today?’” 

Once that happens, the store is no longer selling selection, knowledge, trust, or identity. It is testing how much margin it can surrender before the customer walks across the street. 

Brown helped develop the Cannabis Price Wars initiative through a partnership between MediaJel and the Cannabis Chamber of Commerce after seeing retailers across the country face the same challenge: shrinking margins, increasing promotional pressure, and declining customer loyalty.

Rather than simply pointing out the problem, the Cannabis Chamber of Commerce has made it a priority to help operators navigate it. Through the Price Wars Campaign, the Chamber is providing free educational webinars, practical playbooks, industry discussions, and a 90-Day Discount Escape Plan designed to help retailers build healthier, more sustainable businesses. The initiative encourages operators to compete on customer experience, retention, and long-term value, not just deeper discounts.

The campaign does not argue that every sale is a mistake. Instead, the Price Wars Campaign encourages retailers to shift their focus from short-term discounts to long-term customer value by measuring profitability instead of revenue alone, personalizing offers instead of blanket promotions, strengthening loyalty through better customer experiences, and building brands customers choose for trust, education, and community, not simply because they’re the cheapest.

Promotions can clear aging inventory, introduce a new product, attract first-time shoppers, or turn a cannabis holiday into an actual event. Trouble arrives when the sale calendar becomes the entire marketing department. 

“Discounting becomes a problem the moment it starts replacing strategy,” Brown said. 

A Discount Can Rent a Customer, but It Cannot Buy Loyalty

Cannabis businesses tend to measure the immediate result of a promotion: traffic rose, units moved, and the daily sales total looked healthy. Those numbers do not necessarily show whether the shop made money or created a customer who will ever return. 

In a report examining millions of customers across more than 1,000 retailers in nine states, Headset found that two in three cannabis customers never return after their first visit. That retention gap suggests acquisition alone cannot carry a dispensary, no matter how packed the store looks on 4/20. 

“The biggest mistake is assuming discounts create loyalty,” Brown said. “Most discounts simply rent customers.” 

The distinction matters. A loyal customer chooses a store because it consistently delivers something they trust. A rented customer appears when the price drops and disappears when another dispensary offers an extra 5% off. 

Brown argues that retailers need to look past daily revenue and examine gross margin after discounts, repeat purchase rates, average order value, customer acquisition costs, and customer lifetime value. Those measurements show whether a promotion produced a worthwhile relationship or attracted a wave of bargain hunters. 

Retailers also burn money by offering the same deal to everybody. A regular customer who already visits twice a month may not need 30% off. Someone who has not returned in six months may need a thoughtful reminder. A first-time customer may respond better to patient service and credible product guidance than another automated text shouting about gummies. 

“Not every customer needs an incentive to buy,” Brown said. “Loyal customers may simply want recognition. Dormant customers need a reason to come back. First-time shoppers need trust.” 

Constant markdowns can also ripple back through the supply chain. When retailers sacrifice margin, brands face pressure to lower wholesale prices, fund promotions, or accept unfavorable payment terms. Cultivators, manufacturers, and small vendors absorb the squeeze. 

“Margins fund innovation,” Brown said. “When retailers and brands are constantly sacrificing margin, they have less to invest in, product development, staff education, merchandising, technology, marketing, and customer experience.” 

That is where the price war stops being a clever promotion and starts reshaping what reaches the shelf. 

Independent Dispensaries Cannot Outspend the Chains 

Large multistate operators can use scale, purchasing power, and vertical integration to survive prolonged price battles. An independent dispensary rarely has the same cushion.

Trying to beat a national operator by offering cheaper weed is therefore a fairly efficient way for a neighborhood shop to bleed out. As recent High Times reporting on small cannabis operators documented, lower prices and increasingly mature markets can produce a brutal environment for businesses without deep reserves. 

“Independent retailers shouldn’t try to out-discount national operators,” Brown said. “They should out-experience them.” 

Experience can sound like empty retail jargon until it becomes concrete. It is the budtender who remembers that a customer hated the last disposable they bought. It is a menu curated by people who have actually tried the products. It is a local vendor pop-up, a patient education session, or a store that does not make a first-time shopper feel silly for asking a basic question. 

The broader point is not that every independent dispensary needs couches, events, or an aggressively quirky identity. It needs a reason to exist beyond proximity and price. 

The Cheapest Store Will Not Always Win 

Cannabis spent decades building communities outside conventional retail. People passed down genetics, shared cultivation knowledge, warned friends away from bad flower, and remembered the person who always came through with something special. 

Legalization brought testing, bright menus, rewards programs, and online ordering. Somewhere along the way, parts of the industry started treating the customer relationship like a coupon-delivery system. 

“Cannabis has always been about community,” Brown said. “Long before legalization, it was built around shared experiences, education, and connection. I think we’ve lost some of that in the race to compete on price.”

None of this means consumers should feel guilty for shopping within their budgets. Cheap weed is sometimes exactly what a person needs, and falling prices have created genuine benefits. The responsibility belongs to retailers that trained shoppers to believe full price is a sucker’s game and then acted surprised when loyalty vanished. 

A healthier market would leave room for fair prices without forcing every operator into permanent clearance mode. Promotions would serve a defined purpose. Staff knowledge, product curation, community relationships, and consistency would carry the rest of the weight. 

Brown hopes initiatives like the Price Wars Campaign encourage retailers to see that they don’t have to solve these challenges alone. Through the Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, the goal is to give operators practical resources, real-world education, and opportunities to learn from one another so they can build stronger businesses without relying on perpetual discounts. The campaign reflects the Chamber’s broader mission of strengthening the cannabis industry by supporting operators with actionable tools, not just commentary. 

“The cannabis industry doesn’t have a discount problem, it has a differentiation problem,” Brown said. “When every dispensary looks the same, price becomes the only thing left to compete on. The retailers that thrive over the next decade won’t be the cheapest. They’ll be the ones that create so much value that customers stop asking, ‘What’s on sale?’ and start asking, ‘When can I come back?’” 

The stores that survive may not be the ones sending the loudest 30%-off text every Friday morning. They will be the ones customers remember after the sale ends.

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A cannabis entrepreneur (let’s call him Ben) runs a small cannabis brand in Michigan. He’s dealt with harvest shortages, human resource issues, and the labyrinth of state regulations over the years. Then he gets a rattling message: his wholesale marketplace, Leaflink—his digital lifeline to hundreds of retailers—is jacking up fees three-plus-fold. No phased schedule, no public webinar, just an “effective next billing cycle” notice.

This story may sound familiar to the myriad brands who found out about a rate hike being implemented that would significantly increase their monthly costs. Operators in different states were already venting on Reddit, one claiming their monthly bill had gone from $599 to $6,200. Some described how they’ve begun to look at alternative platforms, while various brands in Missouri and Colorado were known to have organized coalitions of sorts to figure out if they were going to stay or migrate off of Leaflink, covered not too long ago by a few publications. The common refrain: We’re already bleeding margin. Why is our tech partner twisting the knife?

When Predictability Disappears

At first glance, a small percentage-based fee doesn’t look like much. But over time, those percentages pile up, especially if your sales start to grow. One month you’re paying a few hundred bucks, the next it’s thousands. That’s not a fee. That’s rent.

Operators aren’t just upset about the money. It’s the lack of warning. When a major vendor suddenly changes pricing with no heads-up, you’re left scrambling. Budgeting becomes a guessing game. Forecasts get tossed out. And there’s no time to rethink strategy because you’re already on the hook.

In places like Colorado and Missouri, where wholesale prices have dropped for years, even small unexpected costs hit hard. Add in taxes, compliance, and overhead, and margins get razor thin. Operators are already stretched. So these surprise hikes don’t just hurt—for many, they feel like betrayal.

An Industry Already on Edge

The truth is, cannabis operators are under constant pressure. In states like California, Michigan, and Colorado, prices have tanked from their peak. Meanwhile, costs haven’t followed suit. You still have to pay for testing, Metrc tags, packaging, and staff whether you’re selling at $1,500 a pound or $400.

Federal illegality makes things worse. No easy access to credit, no tax deductions under 280E, and no room for error. And in emerging markets like New York, legal businesses are being undercut by a booming illicit market while waiting for licenses and rule changes. It’s a slog.

So when a software platform flips the script and starts charging a percentage of every transaction, that leaves operators asking: Can I even afford to stay on this platform?

Incentives That Don’t Align

There’s another issue with take-rate pricing: it changes the incentives. When a platform makes more money as your gross sales go up, it starts to care more about volume than profitability. That might mean encouraging bulk deals or bigger discounts, even if those eat away at your bottom line.

That kind of misalignment isn’t harmless. When your vendor’s goals don’t match your own, it becomes harder to trust them. And in cannabis—where trust is already scarce—that matters.

Also Read: Stay ‘Melo,’ Build ‘Lowd’

A Shifting Landscape—and the Opportunity to Innovate

Since the price hike, operators have responded in a handful of ways. Some are raising their own prices for orders placed on the marketplace while others are shopping around, trying out platforms with flat monthly rates and clearer billing. Some are even piecing together multiple tools to reduce dependency on a single marketplace.

This pushback is creating space for innovation. New platforms are now stepping up with better UX, real support, and clean pricing models that don’t change on a whim. When a tool feels more like a partner and less like a toll booth, people notice.

Operators are now asking smarter questions: Does this software actually help me run my business better? Is the support team responsive? Can I track my costs and margins easily? Can I switch without months of chaos?

Slowly, control will shift back to the brands.

Because in the end, that’s what this is about. In software we talk a lot about fees and features, but this is really about cannabis companies’ ability to have control over their data, costs, and future.

The winners in this space won’t be the platforms that extract the most. They’ll be the ones that give operators the tools and confidence to move forward without surprises. In cannabis, that kind of clarity is a lifeline.

If you get a surprise rate change tomorrow, it’s normal to feel frustrated. But it can also be a moment to pause and look at the bigger picture. Are the tools you’re using helping you stay connected to your business, or making things more complicated? When margins are tight, clarity matters. And when you gain that clarity, the better your chances of navigating what comes next.

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