What you are saying is correct, although it is a description of the basics of business in the retail market. The cannabis retail market, specifically in Ontario has some significant legislative and regulatory problems.

For example, to even apply to Health Canada to become licensed as a producer, you must have a fully operational facility, along with proof you have further cash on hand to properly operate. This puts the upfront cost into the millions of dollars, and you still could be rejected at the whim of Health Canada. This creates an effective monopoly on the cannabis market by the producers who were already over charging medical cannabis patients and continue to do so, due to the executives of these companies not understanding the cannabis market, and catering to investors as they promised too much revenue pre legalization.

This along with the retail distribution monopoly in Ontario, is causing prices that are unable to be competitive with the black market. The OCS marks up the products they sell directly almost 50%, and also make a profit in the wholesale to store fronts in the province. There is a lack of supply caused by the regulation of LP’s, and the OCS whom either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the significant loss of customers due to their extreme markups.

In summary you are correct you can charge whatever you want for the product, but the greater issue for the cannabis industry is that we do not have a free market due to the extreme barrier to entry. If the market was free we would see the market flood at which point only the producers which cater to the consumers would survive at the perceived “fair value” of the consumer. But in effect, since no new LP’s can start business, and the supply of the current LP’s is barely filling demand, the consumers opinion means nothing to these companies.