Weed Keeps Getting Cheaper. Here's How Far It's Fallen, State by State.

Legal weed has been getting cheaper for years, and it's still getting cheaper at the register. What changed this year is the wholesale side. The national price of a pound of flower has stopped falling.

I pulled the price data from state regulators and the main data firms and checked each number against its source. Here's what holds up.

Wholesale stopped falling. Retail didn't.

Cannabis Benchmarks tracks what growers get for bulk flower across the country. Wholesale flower averaged just over $2,100 a pound in 2015, $1,789 in 2016 and $1,562 in 2017, according to figures reported by mg Magazine. It hit a then-record low of $936 in September 2023, then a new one at $888 on Jan. 3, 2025. It ended 2025 at $1,078, up 15% for the year.

This fall it has been sitting right around $1,100. It printed $1,104 a pound on Oct. 16 and $1,096 on Oct. 23. Cannabis Benchmarks says the market may have found a floor under the current regulatory framework, and says pricing power is returning to the seller.

LeafLink, which tracks wholesale orders across 18 markets, found prices still sliding in 2025 for everything except edibles: cartridges down 12.0%, pre-rolls down 10.3%, concentrates down 7.5% and flower down 5.4%. Edibles were up 1.7%. LeafLink ranked New York and Alaska as the highest-priced wholesale markets.

At the register, the drop continues. Headset, which tracks point-of-sale data, put the average price of packaged flower at $3.56 a gram in September 2026, down from $3.70 a year earlier. Shoppers are getting a bigger discount too. The average discount rose from 23.6% to 27.1% of shelf price. The average item cost $15.54, down from $16.05.

Where you shop still matters a lot. Here's the price of an eighth in the 12 states on Headset's national price table for September 2026.

Headset's national eighth was $20.23. My read: the cheap end of that list is the older markets, like Oregon, Michigan, Colorado and Washington. The pricey end is mostly newer ones.

New York: still expensive, getting cheaper

New York's Office of Cannabis Management says the average price per unit sold peaked near $39 in early 2024 and has slid since, settling near $32 by the third quarter of 2025. The report's own chart runs from $38.61 in the first quarter of 2023 to $32.15 in the third quarter of 2025. OCM says prices "continue to normalize towards national averages" but are still "well above the national median."

Where you buy in the state matters. In the third quarter of 2025 the average price per unit was $41.41 on Long Island, $33.15 in New York City and $26.39 in Western New York. OCM says downstate shoppers pay about 10% more than upstate.

Headset's September 2026 numbers show the squeeze continuing. The average item in New York cost $28.62, down 9.5% from $31.63 a year earlier. An eighth was $33.63, about 66% above the national figure. A gram of flower was $12.93, a 100 mg edible $21.92 and a gram of concentrate $44.74. Sales rose 10% to $160.8 million, but units sold rose 21.6%. Stores are selling a lot more product and getting less for each piece.

Here's what drove it. OCM's analysis, reported by the New York Post, found only 41 stores open at the end of 2023 and 368 by April 2025. OCM counted 705 as of August 2026. Since sales started in 2022, the average eighth fell 5%, from $41.13 to $38.96, per that same analysis. Concentrates and vapes each fell 15%, and edibles fell 14%.

Operators feel it. A state survey reported by MJBizDaily in April found fewer than half of licensed businesses turning a profit. Only 20% of vertically integrated microbusinesses were profitable, and 64% of microbusinesses overall were in the red.

Wholesale is a different story, and a harder one to see. The state's annual report has no wholesale price series, so there's no official number. Cannabis Benchmarks started a New York index in June 2025, but only paying subscribers can see it. Its free weekly notes show New York wholesale rising through late 2025 and dipping in April 2026. LeafLink's ranking is the closest public read. It called New York the most premium-priced wholesale market in its network in 2025 and tied that to a constrained legal supply. A pricey wholesale market and a falling retail price at the same time says the margin is getting squeezed from both ends.

New Jersey: down 60% in four years

New Jersey's Cannabis Regulatory Commission publishes the cleanest price series of any state I looked at, and it's brutal. Adult-use flower averaged $16.27 a gram in May 2022. By June 2026 it was $6.51, a drop of 60%.

The steps along the way: $13.96 in January 2023, $11.96 that December, $9.93 in December 2024 and $9.38 in March 2025. June 2026 was down 21.8% from a year earlier. Medical flower is at $7.02, down from $11.89 in January 2023.

The CRC's own summary of January 2023 through March 2026 shows price per gram down 48%, transactions up 74% and sales up 52%. Same story as New York. Stores ring up far more sales and take in less on each one.

The state's average retail ounce fell from $329.17 in 2022 to $251.06 at the end of September 2025. The excise fee, meanwhile, went the other way, from $1.10 an ounce in 2022 to $2.50 in 2025 and 2026. A proposal to raise it to $15 was not enacted.

Supply exploded. There were 17 cultivators operating in March 2023 and 89 by July 2026, along with 350 retailers and 57 medical dispensaries as of August.

Headset's September 2026 read has the average item at $29.10, down from $31.57 a year earlier. An eighth was $29.69, a gram of flower $13.23, and sales were up 1.4%.

On wholesale, the only public number I could confirm is from a July 2025 MJBizDaily column quoting Cannabis Benchmarks: New Jersey at roughly $2,600 a pound against $1,050 nationally. Cannabis Benchmarks' own New Jersey series is behind a paywall, so I can't tell you where that sits today. The free weekly notes do show which way it's going. The New Jersey index had its biggest one-week drop on record, 14.2%, in early March 2026 and hit an all-time low in mid-May. That index only goes back to April 2025.

Florida: more volume, thinner prices

Florida is still a medical market, and the volume is the story. The Office of Medical Marijuana Use's weekly reports show 46,910 ounces of smokable flower dispensed in the week of Oct. 23 to 29, 2020, and 148,378 in the week of Oct. 9 to 15, 2026, about 3.2 times as much. Trulieve alone was 34.6% of that week.

The price side is harder to pin down because the state doesn't publish one. Headset put the average item at $25.52 in July 2022. Hoodie, a menu tracker, found prices down nearly 12% year over year in February 2026 across all products, with flower averaging $19.77. That 12% is statewide and covers everything on the menu, not just flower.

New Cannabis Ventures, looking at BDSA's sales data, concluded that pricing is "under pressure." Trulieve told investors in May 2025 that price compression had not hit its lowest point. It still reported a 60% gross margin in the second quarter of 2026.

Florida voters are not likely to relieve the pressure with adult use anytime soon. Amendment 3 got 56% in 2024 against a 60% threshold, and the 2026 petition effort failed.

California: the biggest market, and the longest slide

California's Department of Cannabis Control has the best long record. Its average eighth peaked at $35.23 in the third quarter of 2020 and fell to $23.80 in the second quarter of 2023, down 32%. In Headset's September 2026 data a California eighth was $21.28.

Sales have shrunk too. Retail sales were $4.4 billion in 2023, $4.2 billion in 2024 and $3.9 billion in 2025. The second quarter of 2026 came in at $1.013 billion. Active cultivation licenses fell from 9,566 in 2022 to 4,328 by Jan. 31, 2026, a 55% cut, which tells you how many growers have already quit.

The wholesale numbers show the glut. In the week ending Sept. 25, 2026, Cannabis Benchmarks had outdoor flower at $334 a pound, mixed-light at $566 and indoor at $983. Glass House, the big greenhouse grower, reported an average selling price of $312 a pound in fiscal 2023, $245 in 2024 and $177 in 2025. Cannabis Benchmarks' California index hit its lowest level in more than 10 years in January 2026 before bouncing back through March.

The DCC estimates about 11.4 million pounds a year are produced outside the licensed market, and says licensed businesses supply only about 40% of what Californians consume. That's a big part of why legal prices can't recover.

Colorado: a record low for the state's own wholesale number

Colorado's Department of Revenue publishes a quarterly Average Market Rate for wholesale bud. It's the figure the state uses to tax wholesale sales, not a live market quote, and it goes back to 2014. It was $1,876 a pound in 2014 and peaked at $2,007 in the first half of 2015. It bottomed at $759 in the last quarter of 2018.

It recovered to $1,316 in 2020, then spiked to $1,721 in the first quarter of 2021, but that didn't last. It was $1,308 the next quarter and $948 by the first quarter of 2022. From the end of 2022 through early 2026 it stayed between $648 and $750.

The rate has now broken below that range. It was $607 in the second quarter of 2026 and $574 in the third, the lowest in the series. The state set the fourth-quarter rate at $601. The third-quarter low is 67% below the 2021 spike and 71% below the 2015 peak. It's also below the 2018 bottom.

Michigan: down 88% from launch

Michigan is what happens when a state lets almost anyone in. An ounce of adult-use flower cost about $510 when sales started in December 2019. It hit a record low of $58.18 in June 2026, as reported by Crain's, and was $59.99 in September, per MITechNews. That's down about 88%. The state Senate Fiscal Agency's own chart shows the same drop, from $512 to $62.

Headset had a Michigan eighth at $14.32 in September, and its average item was $8.31, the cheapest of any major market.

The fallout is real. More than 550 dispensaries and cultivators have closed since December 2019, including 191 of 430 grow operations. Higher Love is closing five of its nine stores.

The new 24% wholesale tax hasn't brought in what the state expected. It raised $34 million in the first quarter of 2026 and $37.38 million in the second, against roughly $105 million a quarter projected. Headset says businesses absorbed more of that tax than they passed on, though its flower price per unit averaged 7.3% higher in the first half of 2026 than in 2025.

Oregon: too much weed, and it keeps coming

Oregon's state economists put flower at about $14 a gram in 2015 and $7 by 2017. The OLCC's median was $3.33 in December 2025. Wholesale hit a record low of $550 a pound in December 2022.

The problem is supply. Oregon harvested more than 13 million pounds in 2025, up from just over 12 million in 2024, and October 2025 was the biggest harvest month on record. In 2024 the state estimated demand at just 57% of supply. Sales fell from $1.184 billion in 2021 to about $925 million in 2025.

Headset has Oregon at $12.74 an eighth, the lowest of its 12 states, with the average item down 12.9% from a year earlier.

Washington: the first market, and a long way down

A gram cost around $25 when Washington opened in July 2014. Headset had a single gram at $7.13 in September 2026. Wholesale fell from $8.10 a gram in October 2014 to $3.82 by June 2015, a 53% drop in eight months.

Sales went from roughly $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion in 2021, depending on the source, to $1.14 billion in 2025. The state's 37% excise tax is the highest in the country. Licensed producers fell from 973 in 2017 to 666 in 2023. A 2024 study for the state put producers' biomass capacity at 2.6 million pounds, against estimated demand of about 891,000 pounds in 2032.

Illinois: still pricey, but falling

Illinois flower cost $17.50 a gram in April 2020, according to the state's Cannabis Regulation Oversight Officer, as reported by MJBizDaily. By November 2025 it was $5.72. An ounce that went for more than $400 at launch was around $167 at the end of 2025.

Adult-use sales dropped from $1.72 billion in 2024 to $1.507 billion in 2025, even as more items sold. The oversight officer said in October that the state saw "the best prices yet for Illinois consumers."

Illinois is still one of the pricier markets on the Headset list at $25.99 an eighth. In September its units sold were up 28.1% and sales up 10.8%.

Pennsylvania: medical only, and the margin is moving to the stores

Pennsylvania's Department of Health tracks both ends of its medical market. Dry leaf sold to patients fell from $14.90 a gram in January 2021 to $7.49 in May 2026, down 49.7%. Wholesale fell much faster, from $10.65 to $2.80, down 73.7%. The gap between what the stores pay and what patients pay has gotten wider.

Adult use is stuck. A bill passed the House by one vote in May 2025, and a Senate committee killed it 7 to 3 about a week later. Green Thumb told investors this summer that "pricing compression remained a headwind, particularly in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania."

Massachusetts: a new low, and a repeal vote

The Cannabis Control Commission's own data has the average adult-use price at $14.17 a gram when stores opened in November 2018. In September 2026 it was $3.78, the lowest on record, down 73%. It fell every month from June to September.

Thirty licensed businesses stopped operating in 2024, about double the year before. Sales were about $1.65 billion in 2025, essentially flat. On Nov. 3 voters decide Question 8, which would repeal retail adult-use sales starting in 2028. A UNH poll had 71% against repeal.

Everywhere else

The same thing is happening wherever there's a regulator keeping score.

• Connecticut: $12.51 a gram in March 2024, an all-time low of $7.09 in April 2026, down 43%.
• Maine: $12.75 a gram in 2021, $6.62 in 2025, down 48% and lower every year.
• Ohio: $9.40 a gram at launch in August 2024, $6.55 in early October 2026. Headset still has Ohio at the top of its list at $29.54 an eighth.
• Montana: over $7 a gram at launch in January 2022, $5.34 average for July 2024 through June 2025.
• Nevada: flower prices down about 50% from 2019 to 2025, according to a preliminary analysis for the state's Cannabis Advisory Commission.
• Arizona: LeafLink had wholesale flower down more than 24% in a year to $1,104 a pound in May 2024. Headset has an eighth at $14.12.

What it means

The national wholesale index has stopped dropping, and a floor near $1,000 a pound looks plausible. State by state it's messier. Colorado, New Jersey and California all hit wholesale lows this year, and Pennsylvania and Michigan are still sliding. And the register hasn't caught up. Discounts are getting bigger, shoppers are buying more for less, and New York is already seeing it. Whitney Economics, which tracks the national market, expects 2026 revenue of $30.5 billion, up 4.9%, and says pricing compression has become a major variable. The people with the most to worry about are the stores and growers who priced for 2023.