There is a number of reasons why this idea is flawed... but I'll just give you my favorites:
- Cannabis grown outdoors is easily exposed to rogue pollen from other plants growing miles away. When the pollen is introduced to flowering plants, the females begin to produce seeds. Seeds to not carry any medical value when smoked or otherwise consumed. The medicinal value of seeded cannabis is lowered due to the fact that you need to smoke or consume more of the flower in order to achieve the relief you seek. Properly set up indoor grows don't experience these problems half as often.
- Cannabis grown outdoors is frequently exposed to pests such as spider mites, caterpillars, etc. These threats are cause to introduce potentially dangerous insecticides, fungicides, etc. which may leave residue or toxins on the flowers or leaves.
Growing indoors limits the amount of exposure your plants have to various threats, it allows you to control the environment such as CO2, lighting, etc. Which produces a higher quality medicine when it comes to the subject. This is more important than people think because smoking itself is not healthy, but for some is the only way as they cannot afford vaporizers or bubble bags to produce hashish.
The less you smoke to achieve relief means a higher medicinal value. The good you are doing yourself needs to outweigh the bad from the method in which you are consuming the cannabis.
Regardless, good cannabis should not and will not sell for $25.00 an ounce. The price directly reflects the amount of care put into it, and if you pay $400 an ounce for medicine that isn't up to par, that is the fault of your dispensary or caregiver.
What is important to stop is: Clubs from buying low and selling high. A grower might sell their cannabis for $250 and ounce to a collective which will resell it for $500 an ounce, and the only work they had to do is verify the grower as a patient and open the cash register to compensate the grower.
A lot of them also like to buy very low like $100 an ounce, and sell for $400 an ounce. This business model is why clubs have popularly been showing up left and right. The grower should be better compensated, as they spend more to produce the product than the retail spends to sell it.
Growers are essentially sweat shop laborers while your neighborhood collective is like Nike or Walmart. The prices of weed are fine,
growers just need to be better compensated for their hard work.
Not a
totally biased view