Google Maps visualization of marijuana prices, with over 800+ entries so far
priceofweed.com
priceofweed.com
(No, I'm not stoned. :-)
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).
They have a flash demo explaining what it does at http://www.colorhelper.com/tutorial.php
Makes me want to make it system-wide, however. As useful as a floating window is, unless it has a way of supporting click-through (which is still guaranteed to be more cumbersome than not having a floating window), you still can't interact with things properly.
Hmmmm... you've given me yet another thing to add to my list of things to program. I think I'm thankful for that, though I'm definitely thankful for the link :)
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!
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.
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.
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
"The Union" is a decent documentary about cannabis in general, including its distribution and pricing history: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9077214414651731007...
Considering I regularly spend $50 per weekend on drinks, it's an incredibly cheap way to take a vacation from your mind.
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.
*And by fixed, I mean I'm watching over the database with a baseball bat until my programming partner gets home lol.
California:
High Quality: $359.19 / oz. (n=72)
Medium Quality: $300 / oz. (n=17)
Low Quality: $648 / oz. (n=2) <-- ???
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.
A lot of people have been pointing on the same thing you've been pointing out lol. That's why we added the n= for the time being.
However, there are also demand and supply side things going on that we might not know about that is affecting the price.
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.
I'm not sure how practical it is to get users to try and compare product quality from different locations; the sample size would probably be very low because most people buy and consume where they live.
We could display the averages in each quantity, but it would lack enough sample size. Plus having one nice round number is easier to visualize. I think the final .oz average probably within +/-10% accuracy.
EDIT: ... don't be mad at me, be mad at your dealer.
But then again, the people smoking shwag probably aren't reading hacker news and adding their cost of weed to an online database.
I was anti-beer for a very, very long time as well (until virtually six months ago), though coffee has always been my vice.
I'm Irish, and I'm fairly young (approaching twenty soon, which puts me very far in the minority on these matters. ;))
Mostly, I simply don't see the point. I understand the need to socialise and the like, and the need for friends. However, I think that if I make friends when I'm in a different state of mind to my ordinary, day-to-day thinking, then are they really my friends?
Furthermore, I don't like having a crutch. I don't think anybody truly needs to get drunk/high/drink a pot of coffee in the morning to get them through the day. If you do, you've probably made some bad decisions and you should think long and hard about where you're going in life.
I also simply hate the stoner mentality. Why the hell would you want to just coast through life? I mean, make something of yourself! Make your parents proud!
I know, however, that I'm painting a large number of people with the same brush here. I know that many of the people who smoke weed sometimes aren't stoners. I have almost no problems with people who smoke weed every once in a while, just as I don't have problems with people who go to the pub sometimes or with people who drink the odd coffee. I do sincerely have problems with people who smoke pot every other night, or every time they hang out with people, or every time they get even a little stressed. (Medical marijuana doesn't count, though, provided naturally that it's actually necessary. I'm not going to judge people when they're in huge amounts of pain.)
The thing is, though, that past this little speech, I can barely defend my arguments. It's not that I just don't get it (though that's definitely a factor), it's also that I simply have an irrational hatred of smoking.
Go easy on me in your rebuttal, I'm only meek. :)
When people drag in the use of force, that's when discussions like this turn venomous. Using force to "protect people from themselves" only serves to erode people's awareness and sense of responsibility for their own choices, not to mention fostering violent organized crime.
It's refreshing to see that people won't just immediately attack me for the opinion. It's such an uncommon view here, especially in my age group, that I get a lot of flack for it.
It sounds like you, personally, dont mix well with some substances. Or maybe just don't have any experience with them from which you can make a reasoned judgement. It reminds me of my brother, who is anti-everything until he actually experiences it.
People don't have to smoke cannabis, you know - it can also be ingested through food which nullifies the smoking complaint.
I also simply hate the stoner mentality. Why the hell would you want to just coast through life? I mean, make something of yourself! Make your parents proud!
But why do you have problems with that? It appears to me as if have problems with other people who don't fit into your personal view of how one should lead its life. Or is this the only thing?
I personally can completely understand that you don't see the added value for yourself, but I don't get the part where you have an irrational hatred of smoking. It seems like you want to restrict others the choice of leading their lives the way they see fit, without harming others.
Do you have this irrational hatred in other areas too? What do you think about lazy people, for example? Or people who have other religious views than yourself?
The same is not true for smokers. Smoking <anything> is anti social.
It's useless trying to argue with addicts though. Just surprising there's so many drug users on HN. Sad.
Yes. I don't like tattoos (though I love art in general). Don't like piercings either. Can't complain about lazy people (unless it severely impacts me), and I'm perfectly happy with religious people, as long as they don't try to push their views on me. I'm sure I have a bunch more of these things, my ex-girlfriend would probably be very happy to remind me of them.
I'm not about to restrict anybody to do anything. I certainly used to be much worse about this sort of thing (to the point where I didn't speak to my father for about a year until he stopped smoking (that was quite a few years ago now, I think I was ten or eleven)), but since college and since meeting a bunch of new friends with better outlooks on life, I've tried to simply live a drama-free life. One in which I create no hassle for myself or for others, which includes not openly criticising people for their choices like I used to.
However, I won't enter into a relationship with a smoker (even a little bit once a month), heavy drinker, and I'd think long and hard about someone with tattoos. Couldn't really tell you why. Not much of an issue these days either. Game development is such a woman-friendly career choice. ;)
Not sure if I answered your questions there, just typing as I think. :)
I've tried to figure out why this is with me, the closest I've come to it is that I think that humans are pretty good the way they are, no need to poison them or modify them.
I wear no jewelery of any kind, not even a watch and never will, same with you ?
Take the DEA controlled substance scheduling which places cannabis as a schedule 1 drug: (1) Schedule I.— (A) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse. (B) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. (C) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision."
Science can and has refuted all 3 points, yet we're still having debate over the extreme dangers of legalization. Clearly something is irrational here as well when a plant that has not directly killed a single human being or cause violent withdrawal symptoms sits at a higher schedule than opium, cocaine, PCP and benzodiazepines. Even the synthetic THC pharma drug Marinol (Schedule III) can cause death at very high doses.
So long story short... are you behind maintaining status quo hypocrisy purely because of personal reasons?
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.
I'd be really interested to see data from Europe (but hopefully that will take care of itself over time).
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...
[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1662891...
Not exactly cheap, but makes sense if getting caught is costly.
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.
It's a shame there seems to be such a big pothead culture in the US. Very odd how some really clever people choose to rot their brains with drugs.
Saying something was important isn't the same as saying it's beneficial or good. For example, some people often say the following:
"The best thing that happened for me was getting put in jail"
"The best thing that happened for me was getting thrown out by my wife"