A Pound of Weed: Understanding Marijuana Weights and Measurements
- 1. What is a pound of weed?
- 1. a. How many 3.5 grams are in a pound of weed?
- 1. b. What does 1 lb of weed look like?
- 1. c. How many joints a pound of weed can yield?
- 2. How much is a pound of weed?
- 3. Is having a pound of weed legal?
- 4. How many plants one needs to grow to get a pound of weed?
- 5. A pound of weed calls for careful storing
- 6. To conclude
A pound of weed is a large quantity, and cannabis is usually sold by pounds on the business-to-business level. Street dealers too may purchase weed by pounds before dividing them into a LOT of eighths meant for average customers. In the amateur world, only growers may actually see with their own eyes what a pound of weed looks like, and having that much at home is seldom legal.
What is a Pound of Weed?
As a measure of weight, pound (lb) is a part of the imperial system of measurements, which is very common in the US but might be totally unfamiliar to people elsewhere, as they are more accustomed to the metric system.
Strictly speaking, a pound of weed (or anything else, in fact) equals 453.59237 grams, but in the cannabis industry, it’s often rounded up, the same as the ounce, the quarter, and the eighth. Think of a pound as 16 ounces, where each ounce is 28 grams (rounded down from 28,3495 grams). So, 16 ounces x 28 g = 448 grams. Wholesalers may also think of a pound of weed as 0.45 kg. Considering that a pound of weed is a huge amount and that the weight of buds may fluctuate depending on how dry they are, these are all just tiny rounding errors.
How Many 3.5 Grams Are in a Pound of Weed?
Given that 3.5 grams (an eighth of an ounce) is the most popular retail amount in the US, it’s very useful to know how many of those are in a 1lb bag of weed. The answer is 128, or 16 ounces times 8. As you can see, it’s an enormous amount. Even for a heavy smoker, an eighth means at least a couple of sessions, and 128 of them will get him covered a substantial part of the year.
What Does 1 lb of Weed Look Like?
When you put a pound of weed on the tabletop, it will be one wide, tall, and stinky pile, and when you put it in a plastic bag, it will be bigger than a football. Having said that, not all buds have the same volume-to-weight ratio. Indica strains tend to produce more compact and dense buds, Sativa buds are usually airier and surprisingly light for their size. It means that a pound of Indica looks smaller than a pound of Sativa. The same goes for indoor-grown vs outdoor-grown flowers.
How Many Joints a Pound of Weed Can Yield?
Think of a gram as one king-size, cone-shaped joint. Then, one pound of weed will yield you around 450 such joints. Of course, your hand-rolled masterpieces don’t need to be that big, and you can easily smoke up to a thousand smaller joints from 1 lb of marijuana.
How Much is a Pound of Weed?
The price of a pound of weed depends on a lot of factors, mostly on the supply and demand. For example, in Massachusetts, the oversupply led to a 58% slide from January 2022 ($3,387) to January 2023 ($1,416). It’s a tough and competitive market, and it keeps driving wholesale prices down.
The average per-pound price in legal states in 2024 oscillated around $1,000. That doesn’t mean that you can go to a dispensary with a thousand bucks and buy yourself a pound. These are wholesale-market prices, and the per-gram and even per-ounce retail prices are much higher, while purchasing more than an ounce at once is illegal in most states.
Not all strains have the same per-pound price. Popular strains are more expensive, while those less in demand may accumulate in storage facilities and be offered with more and more discounts. Usually, a higher price reflects the higher quality of the buds.
Is Having a Pound of Weed Legal?
Probably not, unless you’re a licensed cultivator, processor, distributor, retailer, etc. In most “legal” states, the possession limit is just 1 ounce, or a 1/16 of a pound. However, the law often distinguishes between how much you may possess in public and how much you can store behind closed doors at home.
Possession usually means something that the police discover when they stop you. They will estimate how much of it you’re carrying and whether it’s a punishable offense or not. If a limit is an ounce, you can say for example that you were taking it to a friend as a gift (yes, it’s legal in some jurisdictions), and that’s where you say goodbye to the cops and go your way.
However, if you’re caught with a pound of weed in your backpack all packaged into 3.5-gram ziplock bags, saying that you were just taking a bike ride while enjoying a quick smoke now and then would be a weak defense indeed. And even if the whole 1 lb were in one large bag, it wouldn’t be a get-out-of-jail-free card, as carrying one pound of weed in public is still illegal.
IMAGE - A map of the central part of the United States with the states shown in different colors and no text plus a few small plastic bags with marijuana buds lying on top of it.
Having the same pound at home (and in one heap rather than in retail-size packages) could be a different story. It’s worth looking at the rules in some of the states.
Alaska. An adult 21 years or older can grow up to 3 mature plants at home and up to 6 mature plants if there are two or more adults sharing the same household. The grower can store their product at home, and it may well be a pound of weed or more.
Arizona allows you to have 6-12 plants growing in your place of residence – depending on how many adults live there. The law doesn’t specifically say how much finished product you can legally store. You’re probably okay with a pound or more if you don’t exceed the plant-number limit.
California’s law allows up to 6 plants per household and says nothing about the weight of the finished product you can store. It can be a pound of weed. Just don’t use solvents to turn your flowers into concentrates – it remains illegal.
Colorado. The possession limits, whether public or private, are the same – up to 2 ounces of dry flowers. Even though the law lets you grow up to 6 plants, you can only store no more than 2 ounces of what you harvest.
In Connecticut, adults aged 21 and older can possess up to 5 ounces in a locked container at home or in a vehicle.
Illinois. It’s legal to grow up to 5 plants and store the product if it’s meant for personal consumption.
Maine lets recreational smokers possess up to 2.5 ounces of processed marijuana, while medical marijuana patients can have a whopping 8 pounds of harvested cannabis at home.
In Massachusetts, home possession limits are 10 ounces.
Michigan. You can legally grow up to 12 plants at home and store up to 10 ounces of marijuana you harvested.
In Missouri, the legal limits for recreational growers are 6 plants and 3 ounces.
Montana laws are much less accommodating to those who prefer to grow their own smoke. One can have no more than two mature plants and under an ounce of finished product.
In Nevada, legal possession of up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis is allowed.
For New Jersey, it’s up to 6 ounces of weed.
In New Mexico, there is no specified limit for possession at home. It may as well be a pound of weed, but it must be stored in a locked container.
The state of New York is very liberal in this respect, as adults can possess up to 5 pounds of weed at home.
Though Oregon was among the trail blazers of weed legalization, its private possession limits are more modest – up to 8 ounces (or half a pound) of usable cannabis.
In Rhode Island, home-possession limits are more generous – up to 10 ounces of cannabis.
In Vermont, you can only legally grow up to 2 mature plants at home and have no more than 1 ounce of marijuana stored in a safe place.
Virginia limits possession to 1 ounce for adults 21 years and older, making no distinction between public possession and having marijuana in your place of residence.
One of the first states to legalize recreational use, Washington doesn’t seem to have updated its rather modest possession limits, which allow only up to 1 ounce of usable cannabis being stored at home.
The regulations in other states that allow home growing for medical patients are quite similar. Research your state on your own to know exactly where you stand legally.
How Many Plants One Needs to Grow To Get a Pound of Weed?
If you know what you’re doing and have a high-yielding strain, you can well harvest a pound from 4 plants in a 3x3 or 4x4 grow tent in around 3 months. Plants grown outside may turn out even higher yielding, but that largely depends on your climate and weather.
IMAGE - A wooden closet with open doors and shelves full of glass jars with marijuana buds.
A Pound of Weed Calls for Careful Storing
1 lb of weed would be a very long-lasting stash for almost anybody, and you’ll probably want it to be fresh, fragrant, and potent till the day you roll the last joint from it. Be aware that the quality of weed degrades when it gets too dry, when you let the precious terpenes evaporate, and when THC converts to the rather inert and boring CBN from being exposed to air and light.
The best way to store your pound of weed is in individual mason jars with tight-fitting lids in a dark and cool place. Long-term storage in the fridge works too, but make sure you don’t open the jars too often or else you’ll introduce too much humidity inside – when you take the cold jar out of the fridge and drops of moisture condense on the glass.
Too high relative humidity increases the risk of mold, too low makes the buds brittle and the smoke harsh. The manufacturer of Boveda packs (used to maintain ideal humidity in small storage containers) recommends RH between 55 and 65 percent.
To Conclude
A pound of weed is a large quantity, and most cannabis aficionados aren’t likely to ever see that much cannabis at once. Frankly, for many occasional smokers, 1 lb of marijuana is more than their lifetime supply. Just picture 1000 joints that you can roll with it, and you’ll understand that it’s indeed a lot of weed.
In many jurisdictions, it’s not even legal to possess that much, even if you grow cannabis yourself and store it at home under lock and key. So, whatever your interest in a pound of weed might be, make sure you know the law and don’t break it. Stay safe!
