When people say things such as 80% of marijuana purchases are on the black market, how are they getting data for this?
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IMO They are always fear stats… stats that can’t be actually verified as true or false… normally used to push the war on drugs, rape stats and shit like that.
The 80% of weed is bought on the black market is a great example… also how low reporting rape actually is so the real stats are so off… there are lots of examples like this.
When I see weird stats like that I always think what agenda are they pushing.
Who do you think controls the drug trade?
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A **black market**, **underground economy**, or **shadow economy** is a [clandestine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy) [market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_(economics)) or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by some form of noncompliant behavior with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services whose production and distribution is prohibited by law, non-compliance with the rule constitutes a black market trade since the transaction itself is illegal
Most data thet give general percents fabricate the data wholesale, or seek less reputable sources for seemingly accurate data, to hide the fact that all their data is BS.
The fastest way to get published is to sell a lie based on another lie.
PS: they identify 80% are sold by non-legal means. A callus generalization, and clearly fraudulent data.
I did a quick Google search and I think you’re referencing the statistic from Canada. But I got stuck behind a pay wall
One way they can test the general consumption of a large population is drug testing the sewer systems. With this they can more or less tell how much marijuana is consumed in that region then compare that to how much is sold in white markets, then conclude the remainder is black market.
This is really choppy data for a lot of reasons. In addition to the fact that the process of drug testing sewer water is already prone to a ton of issues, (one being that not all sewege it “mixes” evenely so some parts might have more THC than others) they also mainly get this data from urban centers and cities because it’s easier to test a large amount of people in those sewer systems. As a result the data is skewed towards a certain demographic (people livin in cities).
It’s a pretty ineffecient way of getting the statistics, but it’s the only method available for obvious reasons.
There is no single entity surnamed “The Black Market”, it is effectively a collective of all illicit means of purchase. So, effectively, you poll 100 people, 20 say they get it from a dispensary or legal store, bam, 80% is from the spooky black market.
They know how much is purchased legitimately, so they just take the total amount and subtract the legitimate amount, ergo the remainder is the black market stuff.
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