Is growing cannabis cost effective?
Why grow your own cannabis at home? Is there any cost savings when growing weed at home instead of buying it outright? Is there any quality benefit?
These are some great questions I get from new or prospective growers. The short answer is yes, there are massive financial savings to growing. HOWEVER, if you only use a small amount of weed per month then growing might not be worth it. Keep reading to find out if it’s worth it for you.
What is weed?
For the context of this article, I will be discussing the cost of cannabis FLOWER. Yes, cannabis is actually a flower! These dense, sticky flowers are harvested, dried, and known as weed, marijuana, cannabis, dope, green, trees, and a variety of other colloquial nicknames.
There are many weed extracts and products made from these extracts. They will all have different pricing structures than regular marijuana flower. Typically, these further-processed products will have a higher cost per mg of THC.
How much weed can you produce at home?
This is an important question to ask: Can I produce enough cannabis for my supply growing at home?
The answer is yes. Even in the most restrictive cannabis-cultivation-legal states you are allowed to grow an appropriate quantity of plants to sustain your usage (4+).
With this number of plants, you can achieve harvests of 8 ounces to 1 pound + every 60 days. My technique to make sure that I never run out of cannabis is to have vegetating plants ready and flip a new batch to flower every ~60 days. This allows me to harvest the said amount every 2 months. This is ample medicine, even when consuming a high amount like I do. In fact, growing my own cannabis at home allows me to EXCEED my needs and have extra cannabis for extraction or other projects.
The ideal situation when growing at home is to have a nice backlog of medicine in reserve. Once you take a harvest or two, begin to save enough cannabis so that you have not run out by the next harvest. Eventually you will have plenty of cannabis left while also harvesting new batches for drying.
This will ensure that even if you have some issues with your grow, you will never be without your meds!
How is weed measured?
First let’s discuss the quantities in which cannabis is sold. Cannabis isn’t like apples; you can’t just buy a single “marijuana”. You wouldn’t want to buy a “bag of weed” as it would contain an unknown amount.
Think about how milk comes in a gallon, quart, or pint. Each has a different price, and even the price per fluid ounce is different. Smaller containers have higher markup. The same concept applies for cannabis.
Cannabis is extremely expensive and valuable compared to most groceries or other consumable purchases. It’s purchased in very precise and small quantities for these reasons.
You may notice, for some reason, the larger quantities of weed are sold in Customary units of measurement and below an ounce the quantity switches to Metric (grams). My thought is that this is probably because cannabis is so light and there isn’t a great unit to use from Customary units. This may throw United States users off at first, but you quickly get used to how much a gram of cannabis is. It’s about the size of a large gumball or the circumference of a half dollar coin.
Learn the “golden ratio” to become a weed purchasing connoisseur
1 pound = 16 ounces
1 ounce = 28 grams
1 half = 14 grams
1 quarter = 7 grams
1 eighth = 3.5 grams
How much do you use?
Cannabis is unique for another reason: Everyone uses a different amount. This applies from the perspective of each dose AND the daily amount consumed.
I am a medical cannabis user, so my consumption is higher than most recreational users. I use on average 1-2 ounces per month of cannabis. Using our golden ratio from above, you can easily see that (2 oz x 28g per oz) ÷ 30 days = 1.8g per day.
This amount is my minimum maintenance dose to keep my Crohn’s at bay. This allows me to dose up 5 -7 times a day as needed. To be honest, even on the prescription bottles from the Virginia dispensary that I shop at, the recommended dose is 1-6 times a day as needed.
According to this quick survey done by Wikileaf, most users claim to smoke under 1 gram per day, which would multiply to equal less than ~30 grams per month. Some reported even using only 1/2 gram per day or less.
I would expect most people to use around an ounce per month of cannabis if using it daily. This might be medical OR recreational.
There is certainly, in my opinion, a large number of people who only smoke cannabis “once in a while”. People who don’t use cannabis regularly might only use it once per week, month, or year.
How much does weed cost?
This question has no definite, reliable answer. It really depends on where you get your cannabis and the circumstances in which it’s available.
To me, a fair price for cannabis is around $10 per gram of flower, less per gram if purchasing in higher quantities.
Now, just because I find this price fair doesn’t mean it’s the average price. I can only talk about my experience purchasing cannabis, but I’ve done it a fair bit in a few states, and over the course of many years.
I live in good old Virginia. This means in 2023 that I am in a NEWLY legal cannabis state. Until Virginia legalization in 2021, my only option was the black market or to grow my own.
When I used to purchase from “non-dispensary sources” the price was typically around $8 per gram if I was purchasing full ounces at a time ($220 total).
The CHEAPEST I have seen from a Virginia dispensary (the one I’ve been to) is $8.50 per gram if purchasing a full ounce. If you are just buying eighths, the price is closer to $11-15 per gram or more.
How much savings will I see?
This depends on how much cannabis you consume. The quick answer is A LOT, regardless of your consumption habits.
<3.5g
consumption
-
Perhaps not worth it
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Organic Cannabis
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Fun project
7g+
consumption
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Will pay off eventually
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Organic Cannabis
-
Fun project
2oz +
consumption
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You must start growing!
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Organic Cannabis
-
Fun project
Should I try it?
Yes!! I started home growing in a simple but effective setup many years ago. It was small enough to fit in a closet and I harvested my first buds from this setup! It’s not that hard to start growing, especially when you can find all the information you need to learn about the plant and how to grow it here in my Cannabis Home Grow online course.
Check this out if you are an inspired grower who wants to step up their game growing at home. This is a simple course that shows you my techniques and ideas for growing the easiest at home. Produce aromatic, organic buds in your own home!
Let me know in the comments if you have saved money growing at home!
