Colorado Considers Changes to Marijuana Edible Packaging

If lawmakers have their way, soon, labels for edible marijuana products in Colorado may be required to come with a red stop sign indicating that they contain THC (marijuana’smarijuana’s active ingredient). The changes are meant to make marijuana-infused edibles less attractive to kids. A first draft of new labeling rules suggested that the symbol on edible pot should be the widely recognized pot leaf, not a stop sign – this was rejected, though, when parents complained that a weed leaf would actually just attract children more. THC-laden food items are already prohibited from using cartoon characters on packaging and making look-alike products resembling common foods.

The proposed rules would also prevent the sale of premade edible items. Manufacturers would not be able to pre-purchase bulk products to spray with cannabis oil, for example. This would not stop the same companies from altering pre-purchased items in ways that make them unrecognizable, like taking chocolate chip weed cookies and grinding them into a cheesecake crust. Manufacturers have complained that this is a really unclear distinction; “”Do I have to have chickens out back for the eggs?”” asked Dan Anglin of the Colorado Cannabis Chamber of Commerce.

Rep. Jonathan Singer (D-Longmont) also weighed in, saying that he believed that hard-and-fast rules regarding packaging should be limited to edibles that are attractive to kids, but not necessarily other food items containing THC. Marijuana-infused salad dressing, for example – catching a kid with his hand in the cookie jar is common enough to be cliché, but when’s the last time you saw a kid down a whole bottle of vinaigrette?