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Snacks Laced With Marijuana Raise Concerns
Posted by CN Staff on February 01, 2014 at 10:50:20 PT
By Jack Healy
Source: New York Times
Denver -- All day long, customers at LoDo Wellness Center, one of Colorado’s new recreational marijuana stores, reach into the refrigerator and pull out tasty ways to get high. They buy sparkling peach and mandarin elixirs, watermelon Dew Drops, and sleek silver bags of chocolate truffles, each one packed with marijuana’s potent punch.“The stuff just flies off the shelves,” said Linda Andrews, the store’s owner.
As marijuana tiptoes further toward the legal mainstream, marijuana-infused snacks have become a booming business, with varieties ranging from chocolate-peppermint Mile High Bars to peanut butter candies infused with hash oil. Retail shops see them as a nonthreatening way into the shallow end of the marijuana pool, ideal for older customers, tourists staying in smoke-free hotels or anyone who wants the effect without the smoke and coughing.But the popularity of edible marijuana has alarmed parents’ groups, schools and some doctors, who say the highly concentrated snacks are increasingly landing in the hands of teenagers looking for a sweet, discreet high, or of children too young to know the difference between pot brownies and regular ones.Colorado, like the other states with medical or recreational marijuana, has tried to keep the products away from children. It has ordered stores to sell them in child-resistant packages and bars labels designed to appeal to children. It requires manufacturers to list ingredients, serving sizes and expiration dates.But critics say the regulations are not strict enough, especially for products that can contain 10 times as much psychoactive THC as the marijuana a casual user might take. (Because prices often depend on the amount of THC, one highly potent caramel chew can sell for $20 while a package of 10 less concentrated candies might be the same price.) And like flavored cigarettes or wine coolers, critics say, edible marijuana offers a dangerously easy on-ramp for younger users.“They’re attractive to kids; they’re easily disguised,” said Gina Carbone of Smart Colorado, a group that opposes legalization. “They’re not being regulated properly at all to protect kids.” One survey has found a small but growing number of children seeking treatment after accidentally consuming marijuana. Fourteen such children visited the emergency department of Children’s Hospital Colorado in the Denver area from October 2009 through December 2011, researchers reported last year in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. Before 2009, researchers reported no marijuana exposures.The research took place after an explosion of medical-marijuana shops in Colorado, but before voters passed measures to legalize the sales and use of recreational marijuana to adults 21 and older. Dr. George Sam Wang, an author of the study and a clinical instructor in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital, said he had not seen any additional increases in children’s marijuana exposure since recreational sales began the first of this year.The children, many of them toddlers, were taken in because they seemed strangely sleepy and disoriented. One had trouble breathing. About half had eaten marijuana cookies, cakes or candies, forms that researchers believed made them more enticing.“Those edible products are inherently more attractive than what a bud would look like,” Dr. Wang said.In the Northern Colorado city of Longmont, 2-year-old Evelyn Hernandez was playing in the front yard outside her family’s apartment building early in January when she spotted what looked like a chocolate-chip cookie in the grass, her mother, Aida, later told the police. The girl took a few bites before Ms. Hernandez noticed and threw away the cookie.A half-hour later, while the family was grocery shopping, Ms. Hernandez noticed that Evelyn was drowsy and drooping, and struggling to walk. When she took her to the hospital, the girl tested positive for THC, according to a police report.“She’s fine now,” Ms. Hernandez said in a brief interview, while Evelyn, grinning, waved and made faces from the living-room couch.On the other side of the state, in a farm town renowned for its sweet corn, a student from Olathe High School ended up in the emergency room after a 14-year-old classmate passed some marijuana-infused brownies around the school last week. Justin Harlan, the Olathe police chief, said the brownies appeared to have been homemade, not sold from a dispensary. He said his officers were still investigating how the student had gotten the brownies and whether to file felony criminal charges.In a letter to parents, the school’s principal, Scot Brown, warned that there would be “serious consequences” for students who brought marijuana onto campus. But with recreational marijuana now legal in Colorado, school officials were bracing for more. “Marijuana food products,” Mr. Brown wrote, “will be more readily available to our young people.”Twenty states and the District of Columbia now allow medical marijuana, and in 2012, Colorado and Washington State became the first to legalize the drug for recreational use. Sales in Colorado began on Jan. 1 and have gone smoothly so far, regulators say. Retail sales in Washington are expected to start this spring.Marijuana, even if consumed by children in high doses, poses few of the grave dangers of overdosing on alcohol or drinking household chemicals. But doctors said young children who consume marijuana are at risk of falling and hurting themselves or falling asleep in a position where they could not breathe. For the most part, doctors who treated children in the study advised that the children be watched closely as their bodies digested the drug.“There’s no antidote, no medicine that reverses this,” Dr. Wang said.Compared with the 14 children who were treated after consuming marijuana, the hospital treated 48 children who had swallowed acetaminophen — the active ingredient in Tylenol — and 32 who had accidentally taken antihistamines during the same time period.Regulators, manufacturers and retailers say they are working intensely to keep marijuana — edible or not — safe and tightly regulated. If they fail, federal authorities have warned they could step in and take action.So far, the state has given licenses to 34 “retail marijuana product manufacturers,” who extract THC-rich oil from marijuana plants to make everything from lip balm and lotion to chocolate candies. Tripp Keber, the managing partner of Dixie Elixirs and Edibles, said his company was fastidious about following the reams of new rules handed down by the state. It clearly labels THC content and tells consumers how long it usually takes the drug to activate. It sells its wares in silver bags and opaque silver bottles. No cartoon characters allowed. “Having pink flamingos and grape apes on products is not appropriate,” Mr. Keber said.The company distributes its products to about 490 medical and retail dispensaries across the state, and hopes to expand to Arizona and California. Mr. Keber wants to reach 23-year-old ski lift operators and 73-year-old grandmothers. But there is one culinary aspiration he does not have.“We do not make a pot brownie,” he said. “It’s a little cliché for us.”A version of this article appears in print on February 1, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Snacks Laced With Marijuana Raise Concerns.Source: New York Times (NY)Author: Jack HealyPublished: February 1, 2014Copyright: 2014 The New York Times CompanyContact: letters nytimes.comWebsite: http://www.nytimes.com/URL: http://drugsense.org/url/QU12jcWTCannabisNews  -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml 
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Comment #7 posted by kaptinemo on February 02, 2014 at 05:03:59 PT:
And of course, there's no mention of the obvious
That is, how many child fatalities are due to alcohol poisoning, courtesy of careless parents leaving booze unsecured from inquisitive little minds and their equally small hands. Whereas, a substance with no LD-50 (alcohol's LD-50 is 50-60) is raked over the coals by such 'concerned' (translation: control freak) parents'.The philosophical underpinning of prohibition has always had a substrate of hypocrisy: that a very small minority of (putative) adults can be trusted to regulate themselves, and thus, by virtue of them being (supposedly) wiser than the rest, formulate laws to govern the appetites of those the prohibitionists deem less restrained...in the prohibitionist's eyes, that is.They've forgotten the Biblical injunction against complaining about a dust speck being in their neighbor's eye while ignoring the 2x4 sticking out of their own. Namely, the 2x4 of their own hypocrisy in complaining in the first place.A favorite author of mine put it best:"Political tags--such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and. so forth--are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort." (Emphasis mine - k.)In short, the latter know how to 'mind their own business', while the former are too busy stripping you of your liberty and killing you to save you from yourselves to be so concerned about such 'trivialities' as your freedoms and your life. Such people make up the road crews that pave the famous Road to Hell with their supposedly 'good intentions'. And it's the blood of their victims over Time that is the primary component of their moral asphalt. Which is why they fear and hate drug law reform - and reformers - so much, for attempting to remove the best wedge they have to date for inserting themselves into, and interfering with, your life. Because otherwise, they know they would face the (righteous) wrath of their neighbors, and risk having the demand of their neighbors for the prohibs to 'GTFO' of their lives, with each syllable punctuated with a fist to the nose. Which, after all they've done, is the least they deserve. 
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Comment #6 posted by runruff on February 02, 2014 at 04:04:57 PT
Ignoids in power raise my concerns
To bad there isn't a law against ignoidiness, GWB, Mickey Lamefart and many others would be doing stupid time in lodk-up right now!
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Comment #5 posted by Sam Adams on February 01, 2014 at 16:43:52 PT
tylenol
interesting that they mention acetaminophen - it's so deadly to kids, and killed so many, or fried their livers, that the govt. had to issue new restrictions on it.Of course mainstream media is anti-science. They don't like things like benchmarks, controlled comparisons, statsÉ.no. 
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Comment #4 posted by Sam Adams on February 01, 2014 at 16:42:01 PT
NY Times
going back to what they do best! I just visited with a friend, late 40's, married with 3 happy kids & wife. He and his wife like good beer. They like to make their own good beer.They like to brew up 10 or 20 gallon batches of beer and put it into kegs. They have a CO2 keg pump set up in the basement at all times.  Guess the NY Times isn't worried about lethal alcohol, which OD"s many thousands of young people every year. Nope, they'll probably just run some more articles on the best martinis in NYC.
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Comment #3 posted by schmeff on February 01, 2014 at 15:23:51 PT
Not to Beat a Dead Brownie, But...
"Snacks laced with marijuana raise concerns," is not really news. Anything that has to do with cannabis raises concerns. There exists a group of people for whom being concerned about cannabis is a profession.The first sentence of this quote SHOULD have been the headline, since I believe most people would find it more newsworthy than the above:"Marijuana, even if consumed by children in high doses, poses few of the grave dangers of overdosing on alcohol or drinking household chemicals. But doctors said young children who consume marijuana are at risk of falling and hurting themselves or falling asleep in a position where they could not breathe."Okay, the first sentence is too long for a headline. How about this: "Marijuana Poses Little Danger To Children." Here's another statement doctors could factually make: "Young children who don't consume marijuana are also at risk of falling and hurting themselves or falling asleep in a position where they could not breathe." In fact, young children are at risk for doing all sorts of dangerous and damaging things if not closely supervised. Duh.Then there's this:"Compared with the 14 children who were treated after consuming marijuana, the hospital treated 48 children who had swallowed acetaminophen — the active ingredient in Tylenol — and 32 who had accidentally taken antihistamines during the same time period." I'll bet there were other prescription drugs consumed too, with nasty consequences, as well as pennies, and paper clips and cat litter and...Yup. I sure hope my kiddies don't eat none of that danged marijuuuuwanna. That ganja weed has got my concerns raised higher than a lizard liver.
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on February 01, 2014 at 12:37:04 PT
schmeff 
I agree with you.
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Comment #1 posted by schmeff on February 01, 2014 at 11:41:19 PT
Save the Children...Some More!
2-year-old schmeff was playing in the front yard outside his family’s apartment building early in January when he spotted what looked like a chocolate-chip cookie in the grass, his mother, Aida, later told the police. The boy took a few bites before Ms. schmeff noticed and threw away the dog poop.Honestly, people are letting their kids pick things up from the ground and eat them? Sounds like cannabis-laced food is not nearly such a problem as poor parenting. What if the item the child puts in it's mouth from the grass is rat poison? Cannabis is not lethal, toxic, or really even dangerous. In all the mentioned examples, no one was ultimately harmed.With legal cannabis, even when things go wrong, it's no big deal. With the Drug War, little kids get accidentally shot in the back of the head while they're handcuffed face down on the floor. Denver remembers this; it happened in Denver. Denver wisely voted to end the assault on children by testosterone-crazed Drug Warriors.
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