This forest green to stark yellow shaded map of the United States plots out the different price points of marijuana across the nation. The dark green regions, like the very top of Northern California and all of Oregon and Washington, are the places that tend to sell the drug the cheapest. The brightest yellow parts, like in the Northeast, are the places where it's most expensive. The research map, originally created by the Floating Sheep geographers, became the subject of the latest analysis of Richard Florida for our sister site, The Atlantic Cities. Florida writes of the variation in marijuana pricing:

Their main finding is that marijuana prices rise the further a location is from the major center of production. Decreased supply leads to a rise in transportation costs and risk. Clearly pot prices are as low as they are in the Pacific Northwest and Florida for the same reasons that potatoes are cheap in Idaho and corn is cheap in Iowa—because they’re close to the source, the places where the product is either grown, imported, processed, or all three.

You can read about the researchers's full methodology and see a larger version of the map by clicking here.

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Erik Hayden