The state Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee dug in its heels Wednesday and, with a commendable 5-0 vote, gave a resounding “no” to a proposal to water down current requirements that marijuana edible products be easily identifiable — even outside their packaging.
That requirement has not yet been put in place at the manufacturing end, admittedly, for several reasons.
First, a task force charged with making recommendations regarding edible products’ appearance threw up its hands in November and said it couldn’t reach consensus.
Second, state regulators say they are having trouble devising rules given present statutory language.
And third, the official date for implementation is still not until the end of this year.
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Sen. Owen Hill, R-Colorado Springs, sought to give regulators “more options” with Senate Bill 136, but his colleagues were not impressed. To some, it seemed as if the state would be edging away from its commitment made just last May that it would crack down on edibles that were indistinguishable from common food items — and in some cases, were those very items sprayed with cannabis-infused oils and repackaged.
We credit Hill’s good intentions — and those of state regulators, for that matter — in trying to revise the current statute. And we recognize that some marijuana products (a liquid, for example) would be very difficult to make identifiable outside a container. No doubt that’s why last year’s legislation said the products should be “clearly identifiable, when practicable … .”
But most edible products can be made identifiable on their own and some of those that can’t be don’t necessarily need to be on the market. Amendment 64 never bestowed a constitutional right to retail every conceivable variety of edible marijuana product, no matter how confusing it might be to unwary consumers, let alone kids.
Hold the line, lawmakers.
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