<h2>Wright's law explains this</h2>
<p>To quote a section of the Wiki article on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects" rel="noreferrer">experience curve effects</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The learning curve model posits that for each doubling of the total quantity of items produced, costs decrease by a fixed proportion. Generally, the production of any good or service shows the learning curve or experience curve effect. Each time cumulative volume doubles, value-added costs (including administration, marketing, distribution, and manufacturing) fall by a constant percentage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Over the past decades the amount of marijuana grown has been constantly increasing, with manufacturers perfecting the technology over time. There's been a particularly strong increase in sales when Canada and several US states legalized the drug, significantly reducing the legal risks involved and allowing for weed farms to operate in the open. Statista provides <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/12406/us-marijuana-market-the-grass-is-getting-greener/" rel="noreferrer">this handy chart</a>:</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/bmoEI5AU.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/bmoEI5AU.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
<p>At some point we'll likely hit an inflection point and marijuana will start costing more in absolute dollars I won't be surprised if a gram continues costing $20 for a few more years.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-28T23:43:13.190Z
2024-08-28T23:43:13.190Z
JonathanReez
<h2>Industries with higher standard markups are often less responsive to inflation due to Game Theory</h2>
<p>Imagine you sell a perfectly legal and normal product called widgets.  Let's assume that this is a Capitolist society where supply, demand, opportunity costs, and competition force you to operate at a low profit margin; so, you mark up your product by maybe 10% of production cost.  Then when 5% inflation happens, you have to make a choice: respond by increasing your prices by 5% or start selling 100% as many widgets to maintain your previous profits.  In general, it will be a lot harder to suddenly increase the demand for your widgets by 100%; so, the preferred strategy will be the increased cost.</p>
<p>Recreational drugs are a bit different.  The illegal nature and addictive qualities of drugs mean that there tends to be a huge supply/demand gap which drives up the cost well above the production cost such that many drugs may be marked up by several thousand percent.  So, if 5% inflation happens, a drug dealer may only need to increase sales by 6% maintain his previous profit margin, not 100% like the honest businessman above.</p>
<p>So, knowingly or not, your drug dealer is playing at Game Theory here.  Is it easier to sell 6% more drugs or risk losing clients by increasing his prices by 5%?  Although the drug dealer has the same need for 5% more profits as the widget manufacturer, raising his prices are not necessarily going to be as good of a strategy for increasing his revenue to keep up with inflation.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-30T14:57:35.293Z
@user20574 Sort of... the inverse axiom is also true and equally disproportionate.  The Drug dealer would lose 5% of his profits by doing nothing which he may or may not notice, but the honest businessman will loss 50% of his profits while doing nothing; so, he will be under a lot more pressure to change his prices.
Nosajimiki
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-30T15:10:39.110Z
Also, keep in mind that even "profits" are typically bespoken revenue. Just because a  billion dollar company reports a 10 million dollar profit does not mean it can function smoothly without those 10 million dollars.  That money may already be needed for expansions that are in the works like a new factory or office building that they've already sunk millions of dollars into.
Nosajimiki
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-30T15:10:41.843Z
...and however you may feel about overpaid executives, they've made life choices based on reasonable predictions of future income just like anyone else.  Their mansions and private planes purchased on credit still need to be paid off just like a typical person has to pay off their own car and home that they predicted they could pay off before inflation hit; so, cutting their own income by 50%, no matter how high it may seem to someone else, could bankrupt them just the same.
Nosajimiki
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-29T15:56:21.950Z
2024-08-29T15:56:21.950Z
Nosajimiki
<p>Inflation is macroeconomic phenomenon, it is a positive change in price level which looks at average prices in the economy.</p>
<p>You cannot simply compare average to prices for all sorts of categories to prices for one category. For example, average prices of computers and other smart devices are not just stagnate but are even declining as <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEEE01" rel="noreferrer">FRED</a> data show;</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/gYeuQOPI.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/gYeuQOPI.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
<p>Drugs you are mentioning might be one of such items that becomes cheaper despite overall inflation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If cartels can manage it, why can't governments? To me, the answer is that: printing money = Stealing money, and governments are more corrupt than cartels</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is not correct conclusion;</p>
<p>It is generally accepted by economists that increase in money supply leads to higher inflation (e.g. see Mankiw Macroeconomics). However, this increase in money supply affects all businesses legal or illegal. Cartels are not somehow specially immune to inflation compared to your local baker.</p>
<p>However, not price of every item is affected by inflation equally. For example, computers or other electronics generally get cheaper over time once you adjust for quality because the electronics industry is highly innovative, and hence despite overall inflation they manage to produce things more efficiently so that their prices still decrease.</p>
<p>Furthermore, most experts agree small stable inflation helps economy to operate more smoothly. This is reflected in mandates of major central banks such as <a href="https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/orga/tasks/monpol/html/index.en.html#:%7E:text=We%20are%20targeting%20an%20inflation,inflation%20that%20is%20too%20high." rel="noreferrer">Fed</a> or <a href="https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/orga/tasks/monpol/html/index.en.html#:%7E:text=We%20are%20targeting%20an%20inflation,inflation%20that%20is%20too%20high." rel="noreferrer">ECB</a> which imply inflation of about 2%. As long as you do not have some evidence that central banks deviate from this, in order to enrich some specific politicians I do not think you can talk about any corruption. For example, you might be ideologically opposed to government building a bridge, but if it builds bridge based on broad mandate, and the spending on bridge is transparent and there are no misuses of funds, you can't really talk about corruption, even if you believe private sector could have build the bridge more efficiently thanks to better incentives.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-30T19:43:50.257Z
"average prices of computers and other smart devices are not just stagnate but are even declining" not _really_, though: inflation typically takes into account the increase in quality: phones are cheaper _for the same performance_, but the average price of a smartphone is going up anyway
njzk2
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-30T22:12:25.853Z
@njzk2 yes because otherwise we would be comparing apples and oranges. This precisely means that the prices of these devices are decreasing. You can't otherwise compare the price and talk about changes in prices if you do not control for quality, because then that is like comparing two different categories. That is econ 101, and this is what we mean in econ when we say prices are changing.
1muflon1
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-31T16:09:01.277Z
@1muflon1 of course. but at the same time it _looks_ like we're saying that we could spend less on cell phones than we did a few years ago, when in fact it is really hard: the average amount spend on cellphones has gone up. (and also evaluating how much we integrate the increase in performance in the price inflation is very arbitrary)
njzk2
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-31T17:02:49.817Z
@njzk2 well but person actually could if you control for quality. You can still buy older phones for reduced price. Of course, if you compare flip phone and smartphone it is apples to oranges comparison. I disagree that the way how we adjust for this quality adjustment is completely arbitrary. For example one of the standard methods to do so is the hedonic method, which is not arbitrary but has quite rigorous underpinnings. Some cost based adjustments can be argued to be bit more arbitrary. Rather than being arbitrary, a problem can be in precision with which these changes are measured
1muflon1
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-31T17:03:28.057Z
nonetheless, I do not know of any serious economist who would claim that price comparisons without these quality adjustments are better/more correct than with them. You can either take the quality adjusted measurements, or simply not do the comparison at all. Making the comparison without quality adjustment makes no sense economically.
1muflon1
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-09-01T19:14:42.923Z
@1muflon1 I'm not saying that we should compare without quality adjustments. I'm trying to point out that inflation, as a measure, has limits, and that one of its limits is that it doesn't integrates the social imperative to own a smartphone, and what manufacturers are actually putting on the market
njzk2
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-28T11:16:57.053Z
2024-08-28T11:16:57.053Z
1muflon1
<p>This is because the price of grown products and close substitutes to weed (from the producer viewpoint) are rather stable over the last 60 years. See for instance <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/</a></p>
<p>and click on the commodity of your choice: coffee or cotton (or wheat?) for instance to see their price over the last 50 years.</p>
<p>Although there are cyclical changes in the price over periods of 5 tp 10 years, there is no trend over 60 years.</p>
<p>Farmers/growers arbitrate between the different crops they can plant, based on the relative prices for future harvests. If these prices are expected to remain constant, the areas allocated to each crop remain constant (ceteris paribus), which reinforce the price stability.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-28T14:48:46.357Z
The link doesn't work. It goes to https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity.
Brennan
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-28T19:49:55.213Z
@Brennan: I have added how you can access the price series from the link
Bertrand
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-30T15:41:00.263Z
Your link's historical data does not go back as far as 1978 which is the OPs start date and does not actually account for the average cost across all crops.  According to https://www.officialdata.org/Food/price-inflation/78-to-2024?amount=20 weed should cost $91.25/gram if it followed the same inflation trend as other agriculture.
Nosajimiki
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-30T18:57:14.467Z
@Nosajimiki: For coffee, the series comptrizes data from 1972: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coffee and for cotton, since 1925 https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/cotton
Bertrand
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-30T19:27:20.417Z
@Bertrand  True, but I also ran into a few that only went back about 30 years which makes a macroanalysis of agriculture as a whole using that source rather difficult.   Something else to consider is that while agricultural commodities themselves may be somewhat stable due to technological improvements, shipping and distribution of those products seems to have kept their prices at the consumer level much closer to consistent with inflation.  I don't see the drug industry being immune to the rising shipping and distribution cost even if the growing cost has gone down.
Nosajimiki
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-28T08:55:37.727Z
2024-08-29T13:25:01.023Z
2024-08-29T13:25:01.023Z
Bertrand
<p>The prices of all the different drugs that I use have not changed at all in the 46 years I have been alive. (Which means the price has consistently gone down, when adjusted for inflation).</p>
<p>Please explain how cartels manage to avoid inflation problems but governments cannot.</p>
<p>To my recollection, the prices have been absolutely perfectly stable. For example, in my city, the price of a gram of weed has been $20 for as long as I've been alive.</p>
<p>If cartels can manage it, why can't governments?</p>
<p>To me, the answer is that: printing money is equivalent to stealing money, and governments are more corrupt than cartels.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-28T17:22:46.800Z
In general (agriculture or not) prices increases when the cost of production increases. This likely contributes to the stable price of agricultural commodities, including drugs and may even cause prices to fall once efficiencies are achieved.
uberhaxed
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-28T21:14:21.997Z
Weed prices are not consistent over time everywhere. https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR2021/8.1_Prices_an_purities_of_Drugs.pdf
barbecue
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-29T10:30:13.777Z
One possible contributing factor is that since you pay in cash and the transaction should be quick and discreet, round prices are a lot more practical. If they start telling you it's \$22.45 it's not going to work very well, and if they jump from \$20 to \$40 that's going to be a problem as well.
jcaron
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-29T11:35:50.297Z
Might want to clarify that you're talking about _recreational_ drugs in your title. I think most people would assume prescription drugs or OTC drugs which have generally increased at or sometimes [well above](https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2016/08/21/why-did-mylan-hike-epipen-prices-400-because-they-could/) inflation (unless price fixed by government regulations).
Crazymoomin
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-29T14:23:38.097Z
Since you're talking of cartels, I'm assuming you're buying your weed illegally in some backyard. Who then tells you that 1 gram is still 1 gram? They might cheat you with a reduction in the size of the portions instead of an increase in price.
PMF
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-29T14:57:31.030Z
@PMF with weed this is easily verifiable by going home and weighing what you got, but I've been told that sometimes weed is spiked with lead and other such heavy metals to make it appear to weigh more ([one such source](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2696942/)).
ave
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-29T14:59:32.433Z
I don't have data sources nearby so I'll leave a comment: I've read that certain drugs have significantly reduced in common dosage (LSD comes to mind, reportedly hippies were casually doing many times more than what is a common dose these days) and certain others have increased significantly in price over time. It's not entirely surprising that weed, as a "natural" drug that can be grown at scale, one that is now legal to grow in many parts of the world, and is consumed by many has not gone up in price too much.
ave
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-29T15:12:37.220Z
In the case of consumer medicines, prices generally come down when the patent expires and generic replacements become available on the competitive market.
Barmar
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-29T19:07:02.613Z
@ave You need a good scale to measure an error of a few percent. And yes, obviously they can put anything in there, and lead is pretty toxic (not to say that smoking weed is healthy, though...)
PMF
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-29T22:48:05.333Z
@PMF most coffee scale will do, and chances are that you're not buying a gram at a time, giving you the option to weigh the entire thing (which should reduce the errors due to low overall weight). and yes, cannabis is not broccoli.
ave
<inflation>
Why are the prices of recreational drugs immune to inflation?
Bodhi Kesla
# Why are the prices of recreational drugs immune to inflation?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-08-28)

The prices of all the different drugs that I use have not changed at all in the 46 years I have been alive. (Which means the price has consistently gone down, when adjusted for inflation).

Please explain how cartels manage to avoid inflation problems but governments cannot.

To my recollection, the prices have been absolutely perfectly stable. For example, in my city, the price of a gram of weed has been $20 for as long as I've been alive.

If cartels can manage it, why can't governments?

To me, the answer is that: printing money is equivalent to stealing money, and governments are more corrupt than cartels.

**Tags:** inflation

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: In general (agriculture or not) prices increases when the cost of production increases. This likely contributes to the stable price of agricultural commodities, including drugs and may even cause prices to fall once efficiencies are achieved.  
> **username_2**: Weed prices are not consistent over time everywhere. https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR2021/8.1_Prices_an_purities_of_Drugs.pdf  
> **username_3**: One possible contributing factor is that since you pay in cash and the transaction should be quick and discreet, round prices are a lot more practical. If they start telling you it's \$22.45 it's not going to work very well, and if they jump from \$20 to \$40 that's going to be a problem as well.  
> **username_4**: Might want to clarify that you're talking about _recreational_ drugs in your title. I think most people would assume prescription drugs or OTC drugs which have generally increased at or sometimes [well above](https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2016/08/21/why-did-mylan-hike-epipen-prices-400-because-they-could/) inflation (unless price fixed by government regulations).  
> **username_5**: Since you're talking of cartels, I'm assuming you're buying your weed illegally in some backyard. Who then tells you that 1 gram is still 1 gram? They might cheat you with a reduction in the size of the portions instead of an increase in price.  
> **username_6**: @username_5 with weed this is easily verifiable by going home and weighing what you got, but I've been told that sometimes weed is spiked with lead and other such heavy metals to make it appear to weigh more ([one such source](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2696942/)).  
> **username_6**: I don't have data sources nearby so I'll leave a comment: I've read that certain drugs have significantly reduced in common dosage (LSD comes to mind, reportedly hippies were casually doing many times more than what is a common dose these days) and certain others have increased significantly in price over time. It's not entirely surprising that weed, as a "natural" drug that can be grown at scale, one that is now legal to grow in many parts of the world, and is consumed by many has not gone up in price too much.  
> **username_7**: In the case of consumer medicines, prices generally come down when the patent expires and generic replacements become available on the competitive market.  
> **username_5**: @username_6 You need a good scale to measure an error of a few percent. And yes, obviously they can put anything in there, and lead is pretty toxic (not to say that smoking weed is healthy, though...)  
> **username_6**: @username_5 most coffee scale will do, and chances are that you're not buying a gram at a time, giving you the option to weigh the entire thing (which should reduce the errors due to low overall weight). and yes, cannabis is not broccoli.  

---

## 4 answers

### Answer by username_10 on 2024-08-28. Score: 12

Inflation is macroeconomic phenomenon, it is a positive change in price level which looks at average prices in the economy.

You cannot simply compare average to prices for all sorts of categories to prices for one category. For example, average prices of computers and other smart devices are not just stagnate but are even declining as [FRED](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEEE01) data show;

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/gYeuQOPI.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/gYeuQOPI.png)

Drugs you are mentioning might be one of such items that becomes cheaper despite overall inflation.

> If cartels can manage it, why can't governments? To me, the answer is that: printing money = Stealing money, and governments are more corrupt than cartels

This is not correct conclusion;

It is generally accepted by economists that increase in money supply leads to higher inflation (e.g. see Mankiw Macroeconomics). However, this increase in money supply affects all businesses legal or illegal. Cartels are not somehow specially immune to inflation compared to your local baker.

However, not price of every item is affected by inflation equally. For example, computers or other electronics generally get cheaper over time once you adjust for quality because the electronics industry is highly innovative, and hence despite overall inflation they manage to produce things more efficiently so that their prices still decrease.

Furthermore, most experts agree small stable inflation helps economy to operate more smoothly. This is reflected in mandates of major central banks such as [Fed](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/orga/tasks/monpol/html/index.en.html#:%7E:text=We%20are%20targeting%20an%20inflation,inflation%20that%20is%20too%20high.) or [ECB](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/orga/tasks/monpol/html/index.en.html#:%7E:text=We%20are%20targeting%20an%20inflation,inflation%20that%20is%20too%20high.) which imply inflation of about 2%. As long as you do not have some evidence that central banks deviate from this, in order to enrich some specific politicians I do not think you can talk about any corruption. For example, you might be ideologically opposed to government building a bridge, but if it builds bridge based on broad mandate, and the spending on bridge is transparent and there are no misuses of funds, you can't really talk about corruption, even if you believe private sector could have build the bridge more efficiently thanks to better incentives.

> **Comments:**
> **username_11**: "average prices of computers and other smart devices are not just stagnate but are even declining" not _really_, though: inflation typically takes into account the increase in quality: phones are cheaper _for the same performance_, but the average price of a smartphone is going up anyway  
> **username_10**: @username_11 yes because otherwise we would be comparing apples and oranges. This precisely means that the prices of these devices are decreasing. You can't otherwise compare the price and talk about changes in prices if you do not control for quality, because then that is like comparing two different categories. That is econ 101, and this is what we mean in econ when we say prices are changing.  
> **username_11**: @username_10 of course. but at the same time it _looks_ like we're saying that we could spend less on cell phones than we did a few years ago, when in fact it is really hard: the average amount spend on cellphones has gone up. (and also evaluating how much we integrate the increase in performance in the price inflation is very arbitrary)  
> **username_10**: @username_11 well but person actually could if you control for quality. You can still buy older phones for reduced price. Of course, if you compare flip phone and smartphone it is apples to oranges comparison. I disagree that the way how we adjust for this quality adjustment is completely arbitrary. For example one of the standard methods to do so is the hedonic method, which is not arbitrary but has quite rigorous underpinnings. Some cost based adjustments can be argued to be bit more arbitrary. Rather than being arbitrary, a problem can be in precision with which these changes are measured  
> **username_10**: nonetheless, I do not know of any serious economist who would claim that price comparisons without these quality adjustments are better/more correct than with them. You can either take the quality adjusted measurements, or simply not do the comparison at all. Making the comparison without quality adjustment makes no sense economically.  
> **username_11**: @username_10 I'm not saying that we should compare without quality adjustments. I'm trying to point out that inflation, as a measure, has limits, and that one of its limits is that it doesn't integrates the social imperative to own a smartphone, and what manufacturers are actually putting on the market  

---

### Answer by username_8 on 2024-08-28. Score: 9

## Wright's law explains this

To quote a section of the Wiki article on [experience curve effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects):

> The learning curve model posits that for each doubling of the total quantity of items produced, costs decrease by a fixed proportion. Generally, the production of any good or service shows the learning curve or experience curve effect. Each time cumulative volume doubles, value-added costs (including administration, marketing, distribution, and manufacturing) fall by a constant percentage.

Over the past decades the amount of marijuana grown has been constantly increasing, with manufacturers perfecting the technology over time. There's been a particularly strong increase in sales when Canada and several US states legalized the drug, significantly reducing the legal risks involved and allowing for weed farms to operate in the open. Statista provides [this handy chart](https://www.statista.com/chart/12406/us-marijuana-market-the-grass-is-getting-greener/):

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/bmoEI5AU.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/bmoEI5AU.png)

At some point we'll likely hit an inflection point and marijuana will start costing more in absolute dollars I won't be surprised if a gram continues costing $20 for a few more years.


---

### Answer by username_9 on 2024-08-29. Score: 8

## Industries with higher standard markups are often less responsive to inflation due to Game Theory

Imagine you sell a perfectly legal and normal product called widgets. Let's assume that this is a Capitolist society where supply, demand, opportunity costs, and competition force you to operate at a low profit margin; so, you mark up your product by maybe 10% of production cost. Then when 5% inflation happens, you have to make a choice: respond by increasing your prices by 5% or start selling 100% as many widgets to maintain your previous profits. In general, it will be a lot harder to suddenly increase the demand for your widgets by 100%; so, the preferred strategy will be the increased cost.

Recreational drugs are a bit different. The illegal nature and addictive qualities of drugs mean that there tends to be a huge supply/demand gap which drives up the cost well above the production cost such that many drugs may be marked up by several thousand percent. So, if 5% inflation happens, a drug dealer may only need to increase sales by 6% maintain his previous profit margin, not 100% like the honest businessman above.

So, knowingly or not, your drug dealer is playing at Game Theory here. Is it easier to sell 6% more drugs or risk losing clients by increasing his prices by 5%? Although the drug dealer has the same need for 5% more profits as the widget manufacturer, raising his prices are not necessarily going to be as good of a strategy for increasing his revenue to keep up with inflation.

> **Comments:**
> **username_9**: @user20574 Sort of... the inverse axiom is also true and equally disproportionate.  The Drug dealer would lose 5% of his profits by doing nothing which he may or may not notice, but the honest businessman will loss 50% of his profits while doing nothing; so, he will be under a lot more pressure to change his prices.  
> **username_9**: Also, keep in mind that even "profits" are typically bespoken revenue. Just because a  billion dollar company reports a 10 million dollar profit does not mean it can function smoothly without those 10 million dollars.  That money may already be needed for expansions that are in the works like a new factory or office building that they've already sunk millions of dollars into.  
> **username_9**: ...and however you may feel about overpaid executives, they've made life choices based on reasonable predictions of future income just like anyone else.  Their mansions and private planes purchased on credit still need to be paid off just like a typical person has to pay off their own car and home that they predicted they could pay off before inflation hit; so, cutting their own income by 50%, no matter how high it may seem to someone else, could bankrupt them just the same.  

---

### Answer by username_12 on 2024-08-28. Score: 5

This is because the price of grown products and close substitutes to weed (from the producer viewpoint) are rather stable over the last 60 years. See for instance <https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/>

and click on the commodity of your choice: coffee or cotton (or wheat?) for instance to see their price over the last 50 years.

Although there are cyclical changes in the price over periods of 5 tp 10 years, there is no trend over 60 years.

Farmers/growers arbitrate between the different crops they can plant, based on the relative prices for future harvests. If these prices are expected to remain constant, the areas allocated to each crop remain constant (ceteris paribus), which reinforce the price stability.

> **Comments:**
> **username_13**: The link doesn't work. It goes to https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity.  
> **username_12**: @username_13: I have added how you can access the price series from the link  
> **username_9**: Your link's historical data does not go back as far as 1978 which is the OPs start date and does not actually account for the average cost across all crops.  According to https://www.officialdata.org/Food/price-inflation/78-to-2024?amount=20 weed should cost $91.25/gram if it followed the same inflation trend as other agriculture.  
> **username_12**: @username_9: For coffee, the series comptrizes data from 1972: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coffee and for cotton, since 1925 https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/cotton  
> **username_9**: @username_12  True, but I also ran into a few that only went back about 30 years which makes a macroanalysis of agriculture as a whole using that source rather difficult.   Something else to consider is that while agricultural commodities themselves may be somewhat stable due to technological improvements, shipping and distribution of those products seems to have kept their prices at the consumer level much closer to consistent with inflation.  I don't see the drug industry being immune to the rising shipping and distribution cost even if the growing cost has gone down.  

---

