Colorado legalized the growing, selling, smoking
and eating of recreational marijuana more than 10 months ago, but it
still hasn’t resolved some major questions about how this new market is
supposed to work.The Associated Press
reported on Monday that the state Health Department was proposing to ban
nearly all forms of edible marijuana, to make it easier to keep
children from overdosing. The proposal was one of several ideas
presented to a state-sponsored working group considering safety
regulations for the marijuana industry.
But health officials quickly backed away
from the plan after the A.P. article appeared. As the Denver Post
reported, edibles account for nearly half of the state’s cannabis
business. Forcing all those soda- and candy-makers out of business or
underground would be a head-spinning retreat for Colorado’s
world-leading legalization experiment.
It
would also seem to clearly violate the Constitutional amendment,
overwhelmingly approved by Colorado voters, to make marijuana in its
many forms legal, and to regulate it like alcohol.
The
federal government should follow the growing movement in the states and
repeal the ban on marijuana for both medical and recreational use.
As
The Post also makes clear, it is proving difficult to come up with
simple, surefire rules about the size, look, potency and potential risk
of edibles. Everyone seems to agree that regulation is desirable, but
how is that supposed to happen? By airbrushing warnings on individual
gummy candies? By making all marijuana chocolates a telltale shade of
gray? It’s easy to see why some health officials thought the simplest
thing to do with edibles would be to just get rid of them.
The
problem is that it’s too late for that. There seems little chance that
Colorado will impose what Twitter jokesters have been calling “Maureen’s
Law,” after the Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd, who had a bad night
in a Denver hotel after eating marijuana-infused candy.
Besides, for all the concern, opponents have not much evidence to show that edible marijuana is a public-health crisis.
Halloween
is nearly here. Parents in Colorado and the other legalization state,
Washington, have been hearing warnings about adulterated candies and
stoned trick-or-treaters. Next month we will know how much of that the
fear was justified.
[color=000000]Quelle: vom 21.10 New York Times (auch die lese ich 
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[color=000000]Gruß City
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