The cannabis social market

We define the market where the traders are friends, and the transactions are minimally commercially oriented, as the “cannabis social market”. Therefore, we add the study of the social cannabis demand to the “cannabis social supply”, already defined in the literature. In our theoretical model, transactions in the cannabis social market are investments in a specific social capital, and the distinctive features of this institution are derived by comparison with street dealing. Some of our theoretically hypotheses are empirically verified by our sample analysis. In particular, our sample results confirm the positive correlation between the cannabis users’ level of social integration and their preference for trading in the social market. The normative implications of our model are derived. Our cost-benefit analysis suggests the adoption of policies which tolerates social market trading more than street dealing.