From the Big Mac to the Eighth: What Cannabis Pricing Tells Us About Market Maturity

Lit Alerts has released its 8th Eighth Index, in partnership with Cultivated Daily—tracking the price of an eighth of an ounce of cannabis across multiple U.S. markets. On the surface, it’s a simple price benchmark. In practice, it’s a meaningful signal of where the cannabis industry is headed.

From an economic perspective, this index closely resembles the purchasing power parity (PPP) concept popularized by The Economist through its well-known Big Mac Index. By comparing the price of a standardized product across geographies, PPP highlights distortions caused by regulation, taxation, supply constraints, and local market dynamics.

Cannabis has historically resisted this kind of comparison. Product inconsistency, fragmented regulations, and immature supply chains made national benchmarking difficult. The fact that an “eighth” can now function as a comparable unit across markets suggests growing standardization—an essential step toward a true consumer packaged goods (CPG) future.

This is why the Eighth Index matters. It doesn’t just describe pricing—it reflects increasing market coherence. As cannabis normalizes, price parity (or the lack of it) becomes a diagnostic tool for policymakers, operators, investors, and analysts alike.

Efforts like this underscore the value of cross-market intelligence. Companies such as Emerald Intel and Lit Alerts are helping move the industry beyond anecdotes and into defensible, comparable data—exactly what a maturing sector requires.