About That Tricksy THC-laced Halloween Candy...

 

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It seems like every year the run-up to Halloween is the same: Outrage about slutty costumes for women followed by fear about what is going to be slipped into your kid's Halloween bag. The only thing different this year is that the slutty costume is something related to ebola and the fear-mongering is about marijuana.

I live in Washington, where medical cannabis has been legal seemingly forever and recreational is more recently legal, so I possess a specialized knowledge set that includes such technical things as what that tricksy pot-infused candy everyone is suddenly scared of looks like. It looks like candy.

This is about the only thing most of the articles get right.

While I support your right to be concerned about the candy that strangers are giving your children, this particular fear is completely misplaced. It points to a basic misunderstanding about legal cannabis and the people who use it while portraying those people as vaguely threatening.

In CO and WA, a few hits of a vaporizer pen (hash oil) is the equivalent of a glass of wine for many people. When you add in the many states with medical cannabis patients, the overwhelming majority of people with access to cannabis candy are legal users of a fairly trivial intoxicant. Much more like social drinkers than the stoners of "Reefer Madness" days.

A quick survey of leaf.ly, thcfinder, weedmaps, or similar sites that list prices for commercially available cannabis would show you that such candies are, at minimum, several dollars a piece. The first place I looked at has edibles ranging from $5-8 a piece at the low end to over $20 at the high end. I'd assume the more expensive things contain more than one dose -- don't be Maureen Dowd, kids.

Do you really think anyone is spending $5-8 per piece of candy to give it to random kids? That simply doesn't pass the sniff test.

In most states, they would also have to go to a doctor and get a prescription first; dispensaries that sell candy are not open to general, over-21, public except in CO and WA.

Speaking of sniff tests, there are ways to tell if candy is cannabis. Not a guarantee but pretty good odds:

• If you spray hash oil on the surface of candy it will probably be slightly sticky and it will smell like hash oil. Even the baked in stuff smells. 
• The one-off labeled cannabis candies are almost all puns on brands or well-known names with a letter switched. Bad puns. (sigh) 
• If it's not in a package, you're probably not letting them eat it anyway, so toss the loose stuff.

If you really want to keep cannabis candy out of your kid's hands, however, ask your family and friends if they are using medical cannabis and have such edibles around. This is your child's most likely point of exposure.

Responsible people treat cannabis, medical or recreational, like the adult product that it is and most people who use cannabis are responsible.