The food in Colorado is going to pot--literally. Retailers across the state are baking marijuana into foods that range from brownies to candies to cookies to granola bars. Yet as these cooks continue to use marijuana in these foods, officials are slowly realizing that it's difficult to regulate these products.
Marijuana sales became legal in Colorado on Jan. 1, according to USA Today. Since then, cannabis edibles have continued to spread. There's beef jerky, sodas, candies, fudge and almost every type of baked good you can imagine. Needless to say, the range of these foods also means that deducing the health effects of all of them will be challenging.
"There are going to be hundreds of questions on the legal and health side that no one was able to foresee when the voters pulled the lever," said Paul Doering, professor of pharmacy practice and co-director of the Drug Information and Pharmacy Resource Center at the University of Florida in an interview with ABC News. "I am very focused on product quality and the steps taken by the manufactuers of pharmaceutical drugs are so extreme and complex that the average consumer can have reasonable certainty that when they take 325 milligrams of aspirin, their tablet contains 325 milligrams."
Officials are going to have to take regulation in stride. More and more states are legalizing marijuana. In fact, Massachusetts recently awarded the first 20 licenses to operate medical marijuana dispensaries, according to SFGate. Oregon also has legalized; in 2013, the state passed legislation that authorized the distribution of medical marijuana through registered facilities, according to The Oregonian.
Currently, the edibles in Colorado are being examined by the Marijuana Enforcement Division of the Department of Revenue, according to ABC News. They mainly rely on experts in order to check whether products are safe. Yet because the cannabis plant contains 500 different chemicals, 66 of which are cannabinoids and have an intoxicating effect, regulations may need to step up.
"We just need to continue to refine the rules as we go," said Department of Revenue spokeswoman Daria Serna in an interview with ABC News. "It's a new industry and we are always looking for feedback from law enforcement and experts in the field."
