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Washington State To Require Approval of Packaging
Posted by CN Staff on June 25, 2014 at 05:07:04 PT
By Kirk Johnson
Source: New York Times
Seattle -- Washington State will require its approval of all packaging for edible marijuana products, Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday, a pre-emptory move to ban cartoons, toy images and any other labels that might appeal to children.Mr. Inslee announced the emergency set of rules on how marijuana-infused edible products are marketed and sold in retail shops as part of the state’s response to reports of overdoses and under-age consumption in Colorado.
“We know that people will make arguments about the First Amendment at some point,” said Mr. Inslee, a Democrat, referring to the labeling restrictions at a news conference in Olympia, the capital. “But we’re here to say the health of our children are predominant, and we’re going to take an approach that is focused on the health of our children.”Officials at the State Liquor Control Board, which regulates legal marijuana, said that the board planned to take up the rules as early as Wednesday, and that they would take effect immediately without public hearings.The first 20 or so retail outlets — out of 334 that the state plans to gradually license — are expected to open on July 8.Voters in Colorado and Washington approved legal marijuana at the same time in 2012, but Washington’s rollout of the system has taken longer because of the way the license process was set up.The lag, while frustrating to consumers and license applicants, has given regulators time to see what problems Colorado has encountered. Two particular areas of concern, state officials said, were reports of people eating too much marijuana-infused foods and of products legally purchased by adults over 21 falling into the hands of teenagers and younger children.A big part of the effort in advance of retail sales, they said Tuesday, is aimed at trying to start conversations about marijuana before the first open-for-business sign is hung.The Washington State Department of Health, for example, began a $400,000 advertising campaign this month urging parents to discourage their children from using marijuana.“The goal is to get parents to talk to their kids now and not wait until retail sales start happening,” an agency spokesman, Donn Moyer, said. He said that after retail sales started, marijuana products, like bottles of alcohol, were going to be more common in many households, perhaps even in the same liquor cabinet — a shelf that children are already curious about. “It was a conscious decision to try to get ahead of this,” he said.The question of what is an appropriate serving of marijuana, especially given the huge increase in potency in recent years, has also become a major element of discussion in both Colorado and Washington, and one that state officials here said they were trying to address as well before stores opened.In March, a 19-year-old African exchange student, Levy Thamba Pongi, plunged to his death in Denver from a hotel balcony after eating multiple servings of a marijuana-laced cookie, in what has become a focal point and symbol of those worries.A new state brochure, shown at Tuesday’s news conference and intended for distribution in the first retail shops next month, is aimed at discussing that idea, and communicating ideas of portion control especially to older adults who might have tried marijuana decades ago, but not since. The brochure urges people who try edible products to wait patiently for results before eating any more, and to be cautious and careful.“The marijuana today is not the marijuana of the ’60s,” said Sharon Foster, the chairwoman of the Liquor Control Board.What happens in Washington and Colorado, both the bumps and the efforts to smooth them, is also being closely watched in states where voters are considering legalization. Legalization for recreational use is on the ballot in November in Alaska, and petition sponsors in Oregon said they planned to deliver enough signatures, perhaps as early as this week, to put it on the ballot there as well.A version of this article appears in print on June 25, 2014, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Washington State to Require Approval of Packaging for Edible Marijuana Products.Source: New York Times (NY)Author: Kirk JohnsonPublished: June 25, 2014Copyright: 2014 The New York Times CompanyContact: letters nytimes.comWebsite: http://www.nytimes.com/URL: http://drugsense.org/url/YR63GxsrCannabisNews  -- Cannabis  Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml 
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Comment #6 posted by FoM on June 25, 2014 at 20:06:27 PT
Hope
Thank you for the article. We were away until just a few minutes ago. The article is posted now. 
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Comment #5 posted by Hope on June 25, 2014 at 17:24:37 PT
Comment 3
I guess I need to tiny size that.http://tinyurl.com/pjr5e6z
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Comment #4 posted by Hope on June 25, 2014 at 17:21:03 PT
I'm sure this is an irritant to the prohibs
Marijuana Considered for Looser Restrictions by U.S. FDAhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-20/drug-regulators-study-easing-u-s-marijuana-restrictions.html?cmpid=yhoo
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Comment #3 posted by Hope on June 25, 2014 at 17:16:13 PT
Why such funding in the first place?
House Republicans block funding for D.C. marijuana decriminalizationwww.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/house-republicans-block-funding-for-dc-marijuana-decriminalization/2014/06/25/d6854ba8-fc6e-11e3-8176-f2c941cf35f1_story.html
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Comment #2 posted by Sam Adams on June 25, 2014 at 09:49:48 PT
packaging & priorities
Interesting how the govt is SO interesting in packaging cannabis edibles.Consider that this country has no place to store nuclear waste. We have shut down the project at Yucca mountain - the current plan is for nuclear waste to continue building up at the local plants near you. The waste must be stored underwater and continously cooled. If the power goes out, generators run to cool the pools. In Japan, the generators were knocked out, and explosions occurred, with waste spewing into the air. The European countries have dry, underground storage facilities for their nuclear waste.Sure is an interesting set of priorities, isn't it? 
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Comment #1 posted by Hope on June 25, 2014 at 09:33:43 PT
Packaging
If it looks like a cookie or candy... or is a cookie or candy, it should probably be in an opaque container. As far as easy for a child to open. Mostly, any young charges I have usually have to have me open nearly any sort of packaging on food, snacks, or treats today... and sometimes I need scissors.Ever heard of packaging rage? It's real. I think it started with CD packaging. When you can't get something out of it's packaging it can be frustrating to the point of infuriating.Ever bought a doll or toy car tied in a box with thirty two metal twist ties or packing ties that could pull a car as well as three layers of indestructible clear plastic packaging?You need tools to open most packages these days.
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