Trick-or-treat warning: Watch out for pot-laced sweets in Colorado

For the first Halloween since Colorado legalised the sale of cannabis, police are urging parents to check their children’s hauls in case innocuous-looking treats that contain edible marijuana. Marijuana shops have sprouted across Denver ever since Colorado legalized the drug for adults in January. While many people are content on taking the traditional approach – lighting up a joint – to embrace the Rocky Mountain state’s marijuana legalisation, alternative ingestion is booming with bakeries and stores realising that cannabis can be baked, stirred or sprayed into almost any food: candies, cookies, chocolate truffles, drinks, cereal, even tomato sauce. Edible marijuana items often contain much more THC – the major psychoactive component – than would be consumed via the traditional method of smoking.

Some people don’t even know that marijuana is in candy, and in very recognizable candy.

Gina Carbone

The Colorado public health department this month called for a ban on nearly all edible pot goods amid growing concerns that they are confusing not just children but even experienced users. After several emergency cases of children accidentally ingesting cannabis, Colorado lawmakers in May tightened regulations on edibles and called on the Health Department to formulate new colour and other guidelines that would make pot edibles clearly recognizable, even without their packaging.

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