Pot Prices Go Viral: Crowdsourcing the Drug Deal?

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The intrawebs have made it possible to compare prices and find bargains on everything from airline tickets to laptops. But here’s something we didn’t see coming: A nationwide heat map of marijuana prices.

The premise is simple: Pot users log on, enter their home town, rate the quality of their purchase, and then the dollar amount they paid. PriceOfWeed then averages out the submissions and generates a city-specific profile. (See photos of the strangest cannabis conventions)

Visitors to the site can then click on any given city, and see the mean results. In Oregon, for example, it’s $276 an ounce for “high-quality” marijuana. On the flip side of the equation is North Carolina, where data compiled from 34 users shows an average price of $447.

The state with the least data thus far? Wyoming.

As for whether any of this anonymous data can be trusted, and just what the legal status is of a site compiling pricing information of a controlled substance, we can’t be certain. But it does point to the unlikely future of a crowdsourcing effort that has already fundamentally changed the way many internet users travel (TripAdvisor), negotiate salaries (Salary.com) and shop for bargains (NexTag). Legal or not, wherever people spend money or time, there will soon be a site that will help you maximize bang for buck.