For the week ended Friday, December 25, the spot price index for a pound of cannabis decreased by $40 (about 2%) from $2,041 in the prior week to $2,001. The simple (non-volume-weighted) average price for a gram dropped nearly 2% from $4.84 to $4.75.

The futures price for January rose from $1,850 to $1,900 on the near-month contract. For the month of February 2016, the forward price increased from $1,875 a pound to $1,925. The six-month forward price for June 2016 remained unchanged at $2,050 a pound.

About two-thirds of the past week’s transactions occurred in a range of $1,641 to $2,671 per pound, according to the analysts at Cannabis Benchmarks, who also noted 10 market trends for the year. Among them:

• A federal district court upheld the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, prohibiting the U.S. Justice Department from prosecuting businesses operating legally under state law.
• Banking services remain unavailable to the vast majority of cannabis businesses. Without access to banks, cannabis businesses are forced to operate on an all-cash basis.
• The IRS continues to prevent cannabis businesses from deducting normal operating expenses from their tax filings.
• Continued use of pesticides that are not approved for cannabis application. An incident in Colorado last March resulted in the quarantine of more than 100,000 plants and had a direct impact on tighter testing requirements being adopted in Nevada and Oregon.
• The high cost and energy intensity of indoor cannabis cultivation could lead to tighter regulation on carbon emissions.

Our price check at MJCharts.com indicates prices range from $25 a gram to a low of $3 in the all-cities index. The overall average price for a gram of marijuana (all strains) in Colorado is currently $12.63, ranging from a high of $20 a gram to a low of $8. In California the price is $14.57 per gram, ranging from $25 down to $6 per gram, and in Michigan the average is $16.59 per gram in a range of $20 to $10. The average in Oregon is $10.34 per gram in a range of $20 to $3, while in Washington the average is $11.02 per gram, ranging from a high of $15 to a low of $6.

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