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Proposed marijuana edibles ban loses steam

Group expresses concerns with proposal to limit food
Smaller-dose pot-infused brownies are divided and packaged at The Growing Kitchen, in Boulder. Health officials want to ban many edible forms of marijuana, including brownies, cookies and most candies, limiting sales of pot-infused food to lozenges and some liquids.

DENVER – A proposal to limit marijuana infused-products, or edibles, to hard candies and tinctures did not meet much of an appetite just hours after it was revealed Monday.

The proposal by Jeff Lawrence, with the Department of Public Health and Environment and a member of the Marijuana Enforcement Division Edibles Work Group, would limit edibles to hard candies and tinctures, or liquid cannabis drops.

That would eliminate much of the marketplace, including popular edibles like pastries and drinks.

The state health department recommendation would allow users to add tinctures to products at home. The lozenges would be manufactured in single, 10 milligram doses, and tinctures would be produced with dosing instructions.

Soon after the proposal was revealed Monday, members of the 22-member workgroup met to discuss that and other recommendations. But quickly, a variety of concerns were raised, including whether the ban would violate constitutional recreational marijuana legalization, approved by voters in 2012. The law is clear that all forms of marijuana are approved for retail.

Questions also were raised as to how effective a ban on some products would be, with fears expressed that a prohibition would empower the black market, thereby resulting in more dangerous, unregulated products on the market.

In fact, the workgroup could not find consensus that a ban would stop kids from ingesting marijuana products in the first place, which has been the focus of the workgroup.

Lawrence appeared to walk the proposal back, suggesting that his goal was simply to work toward a solution. Even Gov. John Hickenlooper’s office, a Democrat who opposed legalization, expressed worries.

“Our intent wasn’t to move something forward unconstitutional,” Lawrence said. The intent was to bring something forward for dialogue and conversation, he said.

The workgroup has been meeting since August after passage of House Bill 1366, which mandated that edible marijuana products be readily identifiable as containing THC. The workgroup must establish a standard symbol. A rule must be adopted by January 2016.

Several other proposals remain on the table, including educational campaigns around marijuana edibles and designing symbols and colors to mark infused products. The workgroup will meet again to vote on the many proposals.

Public fears were raised after a string of incidents, one of which included a Denver man who allegedly shot and killed his wife in April under the influence of both cannabis edibles and prescription pain medication. Another incident involved a college student visiting Denver in April who jumped to his death from a hotel balcony after eating marijuana cookies.

The debate intensified in June when Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote in a column of her “hallucinatory” experience on edibles.

Interestingly, the workgroup learned Monday that there have not been any additional accidental overdoses in the past five months, leaving the number at nine. The state has taken steps around limiting the potency of servings in marijuana edibles, as well as addressing package-safety requirements.

With Halloween approaching, police officials are worried about marijuana edibles ending up in children’s plastic pumpkin baskets. But the workgroup also learned Monday that there has never been a reported case of that in Colorado.

“It is a false belief that accidental ingestions for children are increasing,” said Dan Anglin of EdiPure, maker of many popular kinds of pot-infused candies.

But Gina Carbone, with the anti-marijuana group SMART Colorado, was livid that the workgroup wouldn’t take the ban and labeling proposals more seriously.

“We’re voting on whether or not we should know if GMOs are in our food,” she said, pointing to a ballot initiative facing voters. “Shouldn’t we know if there is cannabis in our food?”

pmarcus@durangoherald.com



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