DOWD: A nibble on a candy bar, and a Rocky Mountain high

The caramel-chocolate flavored candy bar looked so innocent, like the Sky Bars I used to love as a child.

Sitting in my hotel room in Denver, I nibbled off the end and then, when nothing happened, nibbled some more. I figured if I was reporting on the social revolution rocking Colorado in January, the giddy culmination of pot Prohibition, I should try a taste of legal, edible pot from a local shop.

What could go wrong with a bite or two?

Everything, as it turned out.

For an hour, I felt nothing. But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

The next day, a medical consultant at an edibles plant where I was conducting an interview mentioned that candy bars like that are supposed to be cut into 16 pieces for novices; but that recommendation hadn’t been on the label.

I reckoned that the fact that I was not a regular marijuana smoker made me more vulnerable, and that I should have known better. But it turns out, five months in, that some kinks need to be ironed out with the intoxicating open bar at the Mile High Club.

Colorado raked in about $12.6 million the first three months after pot was legalized for adults 21 and older. But the state is also coming to grips with the darker side of unleashing a drug as potent as marijuana on a horde of tourists of all ages and tolerance levels seeking a mellow buzz.

In March, a 19-year-old Wyoming college student jumped off a Denver hotel balcony after eating a pot cookie with 65 milligrams of THC. In April, a Denver man ate pot-infused Karma Kandy, then retrieved a handgun from a safe and killed his wife.

“The whole industry was set up for people who smoked frequently,” said Andrew Freedman, the state’s director of marijuana coordination. “We have to create a culture of responsibility around edibles, so people know what to expect to feel.”

Gov. John Hickenlooper and the Legislature recently created a task force to come up with packaging that clearly differentiates pot cookies and candy and gummy bears from normal sweets—with an eye toward protecting children—and directed the Department of Revenue to restrict the amount of edibles that can be sold at one time to one person. The governor also signed legislation mandating a stamp on edibles, possibly a marijuana leaf. (Or maybe a stoned skull and bones?)

The state plans to start testing to make sure the weed is spread evenly throughout the product. The task force is discussing having budtenders give better warnings to customers and moving toward demarcating a single-serving size of 10 milligrams.

“Somebody suggested we just make everything look like a gray square so it doesn’t look appealing,” said Bob Eschino, the owner of Incredibles, which makes candy and serves up chocolate and strawberry fountains. “Why should the whole industry suffer just because less than 5 percent of people are having problems with the correct dosing?”

Does he sound a little paranoid?•

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Dowd is a New York Times columnist. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.