When people say things such as 80% of marijuana purchases are on the black market, how are they getting data for this?

Question

When people say things such as 80% of marijuana purchases are on the black market, how are they getting data for this?

In: Other

Answer 1

While a lot has to do with surveys, there have been other works that have tried to estimate these numbers differently.

I don’t have a citation, but I remember seeing a presentation of researchers that tried to approximate the volume of drugs in the black market based on the street price of drugs, i.e., making some educated assumptions about the cost to manufacture, and the profit margins required to sustain several layers of distribution, what configuration best explains the standard street price of a drug.

I thought it was cool.