So recreational purchase and use of marijuana is now legal at the state level (take that, feds) in Colorado, Oregon, Alaska, Washington and DC.
I had always pictured that when this happened the product would be regulated like alcohol, with standardized, or at least labeled, potency, and other similar regulations so that people know what they are getting.
Is this happening in any of the named jurisdictions?
Also, in any of these places, are there any warnings on the packaging (or laws) about operating heavy machinery and/or driving?
Finally, is there any evidence that removing the black-market aspect of marijuana cultivation and sale has helped to lower the price?
For the debate: without all these features, I can’t see supporting legalizing recreational marijuana (or even medical, for that matter). If you don’t have a regulated industry, neither the consumer nor the general public has any protection against abuse, misuse or exploitation. Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol, and one of the things that made Prohibition worse was the unregulated nature of what was produced and consumed. I think the same goes for marijuana.
Googling Medicinal Marijuana Warning Labels turns up some images which appear to pretty similar to narcotic labeling: don’t drive/don’t operate heavy machinery/don’t give to other people/don’t give to kids. But I also see some (that are probably jokes) that add in “Don’t use until you reach your destination or don’t use in a parking lot”
It wouldn’t surprise me if the labeling laws haven’t caught up with the legalization yet and the dispensaries are just doing to either be funny or make it look official.
Some people have ended up in the hospital (some for real (OD), some by accident not know what they were eating, some, I think, to make a point) because they ate way too much and got so high they flipped out*. When the cookies say “Eat a half a cookie” and you eat 6 (for whatever reason), yeah, you’re going to get way higher then you realize, and some people can’t handle that, especially when it’s 4pm and you’re still stoned next Tuesday.
Back in college, I used to make “pot pills”. I extracted the THC out of weed, put it into pills and we ate them. It made us really, really, high. On top of that it really crept up on you since it took about an hour to hit you and since by then you forget about them and your throat wasn’t all torn up from smoking it was really strange.
One of the nice things about smoking weed is that it hits you almost instantly. So you can take two or three puffs and evaluate how you feel and decide if you want more. Feeling good, or even too high, slow down. A few mins later you don’t feel that buzzed, take a few more hits. But when someone says ‘I can out smoke anyone’ and eats 2 candybars instead of 4 squares, that’s how they get in to trouble’. Edibles (at least from what I remember) take at least an hour to hit you so it’s easy to over do them.
*For the record, SOP for a person flipping out on weed when they show up in the ER is to keep them calm for a few hours until they feel comfortable going home. Maybe give them some benzos if they’re really having a hard time. IOWs, wait it out. There’s no Narcan for THC. People need to stop going to the ER because they got too high.
Yes. Washington law regarding labeling of cannabis products can be found here, for example, and further guidance on the labeling procedure can be found here. Colorado has similar laws and regulations; Oregon is developing them for the retail market which is not yet active, but has such in place for the medical market already. AFAIK every state with medical marijuana laws has labeling laws to go along with.
Naturally, that’s on a state level. Obviously there is no federal standard for labeling cannabis products yet. But the states aren’t being stupid about it.
As I understand it, a lot of the people in Colorado and Washington have gone back to either medical marijuana prescriptions or buying illegally because the taxes on the legal are prohibitive. So, not so much with lowering the price.
I’ve heard the same thing Ethilrist has…but that’s entirely anecdotal. I can offer firsthand experience of the the past year of Washington’s retail sales that prices were exorbitant at first but are not nearly so bad now. They’re certainly low enough at this point that I would opt for retail over the black market every time.
When it comes to answering the question of whether or not ending prohibition will result in lower prices for the consumer, a year or two is probably not enough time. But the trend seems to be dramatically downward, even with the existing, occasionally silly, tax structure.
But white vs black vs gray market is a fairly complex issue.
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I’m in Colorado and that’s not true. At the beginning, demand was crushing supply, so prices were high, but as more and more stores open, supply is catching up and prices are dropping precipitously. Prices are down 40% from this time last year. In September, taxes will be lowered to 8% with the expressed intention of driving the illegal markets further away.
I’m in Colorado and I don’t see this. Most of the “black market” is kids buying the medical stuff, somehow, which IS illegal, but the product started out legal. No different than under 21s drinking alcohol. They manage to get it.
There have been several stories, including on here, about people buying a candy bar and eating the whole thing when they were only supposed to eat one square.
Do people understand how many mg of thc it takes to get them high? With alcohol you can calculate how many drinks to get the results you want. Do people know the difference between 10mg and 110mg?
Do they have warnings letting people know edibles can take 2 hours to take effect, and to not keep eating more and more because they expect it to hit early?
“People?” Probably not. More and more, though. It’s an education process. In my experience, retailers and growers in both Oregon and Washington are quite invested in keeping their nascent industry afloat, and are therefore generally eager to explain what percentages and quantities mean. If you’d never had alcohol before, you won’t know how it will affect you personally, so the best advice is to start slow and be careful; same with cannabis.
From what I can pick up in a news feed on the subject, a number of shops advertise different strains that advise the customer of the different levels of Cannabinoids in their products by percentage, as people use it for different purposes.
Is there warnings on alcohol products for the same? No. Should there be?
Yes, prices of Cannabis have come down in States where it is fully legalized compared to States where it is not.
I think Cannabis should be treated the same as many other herbs/vegetables, and left unregulated. If one wants to talk about abuse, misuse, and exploitation, it's possible to apply those terms to half the things that can be found in the supermarket, drug store, or fast food outlet. There is no need to treat it like alcohol either. Alcohol is a poison, albeit a poison that bodies can handle in relatively small doses. Cannabis has a full spectrum of nutrients and health goodies that the general public is just waking up to with the research that is coming to light.
Oh. Perhaps in your area there are warnings? The context of my response was to the question of whether there should be warnings for Cannabis with relation to operating heavy machinery and driving a motor vehicle. Now it’s been a while since I’ve been to the US, but last time I was I don’t remember any such warnings on cases of beer, bottles of wine or spirits.
Cannabis is only psychoactive if it’s heat processed in some way. Cold cannabis (eaten raw) or high CBD/low THC strains are not mind altering.
Right now I am looking at too different packages for “pot candy” bought legally in two different pot stores in Denver. They have similar but not identical health warning, and similar but not identical dosage information. For example, one claims that the package contains 100mg of THC infused into 10 pieces of “peach tart” candy, but does not make a claim that the THC amount is the same in each peice. The “grapefruit” candy specifies 10mg per piece.
