Wouldn’t call that ‘cheap.’ Tobacco’s a lot cheaper.”
You have to consider though that pot smokers don’t tend to smoke anywhere near as much pot as cigarettes smokers would smoke tobacco. According to SAMHSA, the average current pot smoker, or person who admits smoking marijuana in the last thirty days prior to taking their survey, smokes about 7 grams of marijuana per month. I’ve seen similar numbers from surveys in other countries where they are trying to determine the amount of pot the average pot smoker is smoking. A pack of tobacco cigarettes has around an ounce of tobacco in it. A lot of smokers smoke more than a pack a day. I know I was smoking close to two packs a day when I smoked. No doubt there are some pot smokers who smoke way more than 7 grams a month, but there are also those who smoke less than that amount. There are about 28.39 grams in an ounce, so the average pot smoker is smoking an ounce about every four months. I think that $60 to $80 an ounce is more expensive than it really is in Houston, but if it does cost that much then on average a pot smoker who buys Mexican by the ounce would be spending $15 or $20 a month. The average cigarette smoker will spend several times that much per month.
Equating to 3oz./year times what, $70/oz.? $210/yr.? Given that there are 15 million marijuana users, that works out to a $3B U.S. market.
LA spends that much.
But let's go with your numbers. Make marijuana legal and the price drops 90%, bringing it in line with the cost of cigarettes. Our $3B market dropped to $300 million. "Tax the hell out of it" at 100% and that brings in $300 million.
Peanuts.