Indiana TV Station Claims Kids Are Ordering Cannabis Candy Online
The report also warns that the THC content of marijuana edibles is "anywhere between 70 and 100 percent."
The strangers who supposedly were trying to get your kids high by passing out cannabis candy on Halloween apparently have moved online. Or so claims WANE, the CBS affiliate in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
The headline over the WANE story—which was reposted by WRIC, the ABC station in Richmond, Virginia—warns that "dealers [are] using THC-laced 'edibles' to attract young people." Reporter Angelica Robinson claims "marijuana dealers are targeting young people," that "much of it is done online," and that "buyers order the candies online and use them to get high discreetly." Jerri Lerch of the Allen County Drug and Alcohol Consortium tells Robinson that drug dealers "tweet targeted young people about the availability of attractive marijuana products." But neither Lerch nor Robinson presents any evidence of such online commerce in cannabis candies for kids.
The genesis of the story was an incident that the Noble County Sheriff's Department last week described on Facebook as "a transaction involving suspicious lollipops" at West Noble High School in Ligonier. The post was accompanied by photographs of two cherry lollipops and the package from which they apparently came, which indicates they were made by 2 Baked Gerrls, an edible manufacturer that serves patients in Michigan, a neighboring state that allows medical use of marijuana. The statement from the sheriff's department says nothing about online sales, an idea that seems to have sprung from the combined imaginations of Lerch and Robinson.
"They're getting them through some sort of black market," Lerch tells WANE. "That could be online or on the web, or some sort of physical transaction of some kind." It is no stretch to suggest that medical marijuana products from Michigan are sold "through some sort of black market" when they are purchased in Indiana, where marijuana is not legal for any purpose. But the rest, including the teenager-targeting tweets and the websites selling THC-infused treats to high school students, sounds like speculative fiction rather than news.
Robinson compounds the deception with some bizarre scaremongering about marijuana edibles. "The small suckers could pack a big punch," she says. "Typically, edibles can contain anywhere between 70 and 100 percent of THC. Marijuana has just 17 to 30 percent."
These numbers are nonsensical. A lollipop that was 100 percent THC would not be a lollipop; it would be pure THC. Even a product that was 70 percent THC would not have the taste, consistency, or appearance of a lollipop, which consists mostly of sugar. And if it were possible to create such a thing, a seven-gram lollipop that was 70 percent THC would contain 4,900 milligrams of marijuana's main psychoactive ingredient. The label on the 2 Baked Gerrls package indicates that it contains 50 milligrams of THC, or 25 milligrams per lollipop (assuming both pictured lollipops came from the same package).
Such impossible claims about the THC content of marijuana edibles are more common than you might think. In an op-ed piece published last year, Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska, Sheriff Mark Overman averred that "'edibles,' in the form of candy, baked goods, and drinks, have [THC] levels as high as 90 percent." Now that Robinson has upped Overman's ante, we may soon see warnings that the THC content of some edibles exceeds 100 percent.
[Via Dank Space; thanks to Joshua Hotchkin for the tip.]
