Edibles Battle Heats Up in Colorado

The chocolate bar in question: Attendees of the Denver County Fair in August say it was loaded and got them sick.

While the MPP is advising responsible use of edible products with a new billboard campaign in Colorado, a class-action suit against an infused-chocolate company is moving ahead.

More than 100 people have joined the suit that charges Beyond Broadway LLC, who owns Full Melt Chocolate, with giving away samples of loaded chocolate bars at the Denver County Fair that sickened a number of people in August. The Fair strictly banned marijuana products being sold or given away. The Denver-based Beyond Broadway claims, "If this occurred it was without our knowledge and was not sanctioned by our company."

A source tells CelebStoner that Beyond Broadway's LivWell booth ran out of non-marijuana chocolates towards the of the Fair on Aug. 3 and may have mistakenly restocked the booth with infused bars. This all took place in the Fair's first-time Pot Pavilion.

When Jordan Combs experienced uncontrollable "projectile vomiting," his wife drove him to the Swedish Medical Center where he was diagnosed with "overdosing on THC." Another Fair attendee Gregory Lindfors thought he was suffering a stroke and rushed to the University of Colorado Hospital where he received the same diagnosis as Combs. Hailee Passow was taken to the Denver Health Medical Center with an abnormally fast heart rate; she missed a week of work.

That’s not Maureen Dowd in the billboard, but it plays with the bad experience she had in a hotel room back in February.

The Marijuana Policy Project campaign comes on the heels of this controversy and references Maureen Dowd's harrowing experience on a chocolate bar that made national headlines when she wrote about in her New York Times column, "Don't Harsh Out Mellow, Dude," in June.

The billboard recommends users to "start low and go slow" when consuming edibles, and directs them to a site that encourages responsible use.

Meanwhile, TV's Dr. Oz took has taken a stand against marijuana-infused poducts on his daytime talk show. In a segment titled, "The Dark Side of Legal Pot," he questioned the sense of allowing pot products that can get into the hands of children on the market. Seven children under the influence have been sent to ICU this year in Colorado, Oz claimed. "We need to make these products less appealing to our kids," he concluded.

Steve Bloom

Steve Bloom

Publisher of CelebStoner.com, former editor of High Times and Freedom Leaf and co-author of Pot Culture and Reefer Movie Madness.