Edibles at Risk – Rep. Acree Proposes Ban

I just got off the telephone with Representative Cindy Acree, one of the sponsors of H.B. 11-1250. This is a bill introduced on February 9, 2011 by Representatives Acree, Balmer, Conti, Joshi, Ramirez, Scott, and by Senators Harvey, King K., Lambert. (All Republicans) H.B. 11-1250 would prohibit medical marijuana-infused consumable food and beverage product manufacturing and sale. In other words, if passed, no more MMJ edibles sold legally in Colorado. I asked Acree about the reason for this bill. She said she has been “bombarded with correspondence from constituents” about minors ending up in emergency rooms from either inadvertently consuming MMJ edibles, or from eating them without sufficient information about the dosage of medicine in the product. (If anyone has statistics on how many such cases there have been, I would love to have access to them.) Her proposed solution is to outlaw the sale of edibles, but allow patients who want to eat their medicine to buy leaf MMJ and bake their own brownies.
When asked about other methods of approaching this avalanche of cases, such as requiring patients to keep the medicine out of the reach of children or requiring manufacturers to include THC content on the label, Rep. Acree asserted that the fact that MMJ is still illegal federally prevents Colorado from requiring that patients be responsible for keeping it out of the hands of minors. (I did not understand the logic of this.) As for requiring that the THC content be disclosed on the packaging, Rep. Acree expressed her concern that the significant cost of compliance would be passed on to the consumer, which would be unfair to them. (I did not understand the logic of this, either.)