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Bill targets 'pot' candy
Fred Lucas | NewsTimesLIVE.com | Mar 18 2006

PS: More candy craziness...

HARTFORD — Never mind inhaling. Now lawmakers want to track down those who lick.

The legislature is considering a bill to make it illegal for stores to sell marijuana-flavored candy, called Chronic Candy, arguing it could cause young people to begin using marijuana.

"To trivialize or suggest that marijuana use is a light-hearted affair runs counter to every message society ought to be sending to young people about drug use," said Sen. Andrew Roraback, a Goshen Republican whose district includes Brookfield and New Milford.

"Anything that tends to encourage or normalize drug use I think is deserving of scrutiny from the government," he said.

While the lollipops, the "sticky ickys" and hard candy aren't made with marijuana, the candies use hemp's essential oils for flavor and scent. They have names like Pot Suckers, Purple Erkle, Blue Hase and Rasta. Novio LLC of Carona, Calif., makes Chronic Candy.

"Marijuana-tasting candy should be banned because it is a gateway to actual marijuana use, which in turn leads to more serious illegal drugs," said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. "This mocks our current prohibition."

Connecticut joins state legislatures in New York, New Jersey, Georgia and Michigan in considering a ban on a candy containing no illegal substance.

The Connecticut bill passed through the legislature's General Law Committee last week, despite opposition from the committee's co-chairman, Sen. Thomas Colapietro, D-Bristol, who doesn't really take the legislation seriously.

"The first thing I would ask my kid is how do you know what marijuana tastes like?" he said. "And if it doesn't really taste like marijuana, who is going to take the company to court over it?

"In a short session, we've got bigger fish to fry. It's just another lollipop to me. I prefer Tootsie-Pops myself, with the chocolate in the middle," Colapietro said.

Sen. David Cappiello, R-Danbury, the ranking member of the General Law Committee, also voted against the bill, questioning whether government should regulate candy flavor.

"Maybe I'm missing something, but I didn't think people tasted marijuana," Cappiello said. "These candies don't make people high or anything else. It's just the flavor. Why should we ban foods and candy for the taste if they do no harm?"

But promoting this type of product to young people is risky, said Judy Blanchard, the district health coordinator for Newtown schools.

"This sends a very bad message, and if the manufacturers aren't going to take responsibility, then the legislature should act," Blanchard said. "There is a lot of discussion nationally about this product. But it makes no sense why anyone would want the taste of marijuana."

Blanchard only knows of rare occasions where children have had such candy and hasn't seen it sold anywhere. She also said it is hard to quantify if this candy leads to drug use, but it can't help the problem.

"Both as a mom and a professional, I am opposed to cigarette candy. Does that candy mean more young people will turn to smoking? I don't know," she said. "But along the same lines, it makes drug use seem positive and fun."

A spokesman from Novio could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Even if the candy isn't the state's leading health risk, the legislature should still address it, said Rep. David Scribner, R-Brookfield.

""We should do anything we can do deter that enticement," Scribner said. "Whether there is an actual effect is hard to determine, but it could lure the interest for someone to take steps to further reckless behavior."

PS: There is a weird relationship between the pot and candy, and actual pot. The argument is that adults cannot enjoy "pot candy" because of the chiiiiildren... just as adults cannot enjoy pot itself because of the chiiiildren.

I wonder how long before root beer companies have to change the name of their product. After all it shares a lot of qualities with beer; name, carbonation, water.

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TehUberGeeK

I used to eat candy cigs as a kid, The hard candy with the red colored top. It hardly made me want to smoke real cigs. Also smoke pipe shaped black licorice and never felt compiled to smoke tobacco out of a pipe.

so how do they know it is a gateway to actual marijuana use?

/drank rootbeer

Buzzby

I'd vote for these guys!


It makes no sense to me why anyone would want the taste of anchovies, but I'm not trying to ban them. When we start trying to legislate what tastes people should like, the government isn't only in your pocket and your bedroom, it's trying to be in your head!

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michaelbation

this topic is absolutely ridiculous, after all coca-cola has ingredients in it to make it taste like the coca plant, yet no one's wanting to ban the drink. it's a hypocrisy, do people just think that coke is better than pot or are they just plain ignorant?

Ilove#

where do you get the idea that coca-cola is made to taste like the coca plant?
I think you're getting confused with the fact that coca-cola did contain some cocaine until 1929.

[edit] don't get me wrong, I do agree it is rediculous to ban something based on how it tastes. Or the fact that it gets you high for that matter...

 

teufelfisch

We need to card people who buy O'Douls.

Sure, it's non-alcoholic, but it tastes JUST LIKE BEER! Therefore, it leads to hardcore beer use, and kids that start out on O'Doul's will become slobbering alcoholics by the time they are 19 years old.

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Jose Melendez

Drug war is crime. We have proof:

Re: where do you get the idea that coca-cola is made to taste like the coca plant?
I think you're getting confused with the fact that coca-cola did contain some cocaine until 1929.

" . . . (T)he secret recipe for Coca-Cola includes the use of an extract from the allegedly dangerous coca leaf. For more than a century, the U.S. government has given the Coca-Cola Company an exemption with regard to the importation and use of coca leaves in its famous soft drink. Consequently, the Stepan Company, a New Jersey-based chemical manufacturer, is permitted to legally import coca leaves from Peru, which it then processes for Coca-Cola.

As a result, one of the world’s largest multinational companies benefits from government policies that give it a monopoly in the coca-derived soft drink market in the United States, protecting the soft drink giant from all competition. And so, while Coca-Cola’s access to Third World markets helped it earn $1.28 billion in profits in the third quarter of 2005—a 37 percent increase over the same period last year—the world’s largest soft drink market remains closed to a product manufactured by a small indigenous community in rural Colombia where 85 percent of the population lives in poverty.

Needless to say, it promises to be a very happy holiday season indeed for supposedly demobilized paramilitary drug traffickers and the very profitable Coca-Cola Company. Meanwhile, Colombia’s impoverished indigenous and peasant populations will once again receive little more than the proverbial lump of coal in their holiday stockings."

December 19, 2005

From Colombia Journal Online: Coca-Cola to Cocaine: ‘Tis the Season for Hypocrisy in Colombia

by Garry Leech

http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia223.htm

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" the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo reported that an affiliate of Coca-Cola in Brazil bought large quantities of coca leaf in Bolivia. However, the sale was never made directly: a chemical products laboratory (making flavors and other products), subsidiary of the multinational Monsanto, was in charge of buying and “processing” the coca leaf, that was then sold to the owners of the dark-colored soft drink as a mixture. Then, as now, Coca-Cola denied that it uses coca leaf to manufacture “the real thing.” It seems that the same is occurring today.

The operation began in this country when the Albo Export company, once it obtained the necessary licenses, began to warehouse coca leaf. When the required quantity was collected, it was sent to Stepan Chemical of Maywood, New Jersey. The volume of each shipment is determined by the United States laboratory, and according to U.S. government reports, the processing of the coca leaf includes (they swear) a “de-cocainization” of the plant. That is to say, they eliminate the alkaloid that it contains… and later use that to manufacture medicines, anesthetics and artificial flavors.

The Bolivian media, as a result of this report, has begun to speculate about the possible use of the coca leaf as an ingredient in Coca-Cola, although the U.S. company strongly denies it, as its representative declared to El Universal in Mexico. Adriana Valladares, its representative in Mexico, says: “Coca-Cola does not buy coca leaf.” It’s also been made public that the Albo Export, a company owned by Bolivian Fernando Alborta, has exported coca from Peru and Bolivia in recent years, and that between 1997 and 1999 it sent 340 tons of coca leaf to the United States.

These purchase and processing operations are closely monitored in Bolivia by the General Coca Control and Auditing Board (Digeco, in its Spanish acronym) and in the United States, of course, by the DEA, which includes providing the warehouses with sophisticated alarm systems and storage caskets for this curious treasure in New Jersey. This suggests an irony: A government wants to eradicate an Andean vegetable from the planet and, at the same time, use it within its own territory for medicine and food products."

from: The Narco News Bulletin: Coca in the Cola
The soft drink of Atlanta and the coca leaf of the Andes

By Luis A. Gómez
Narco News Andean Bureau Chief
December 20, 2002

http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article569.html

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see also this link

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See also: Got Monopoly? The ElSohly of American Coca Commerce

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"Stepan Company, Natural Products Dept., 100 W. Hunter
Avenue, Maywood, New Jersey, made application by
renewal to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
to be registered as an importer of Coca Leaves (9040),
a basic class of controlled substance listed in
Schedule II.

The firm plans to import the coca leaves to
manufacture bulk controlled substances.

No comments or objections have been received. DEA has
considered the factors in Title 21, United States
Code, Section 823(a) and determined that the
registration of Stepan Company to import the listed
controlled substance is consistent with the public
interest and with United States obligations under
international treaties, conventions, or protocols in
effect on May 1, 1971, at this time. DEA has
investigated Stepan Company on a regular basis to
ensure that the company's continued registration is
consistent with the public interest*. This
investigation included inspection and testing of the
company's physical security systems, verification of
the company's compliance with state and local laws,
and a review of the company's background and history."

from: http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/fe...4/fr031114.htm

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nornerator

I live in Michigan, I will be writting a letter to my senator shortly.

The government has no right to control what we like to taste!

First they ban certain feelings, now they ban tastes. What next? Visual images will be banned, saying certain things will be banned.

I'm really becoming afraid.

nerphroll

But whether it's non-alcoholic beer or candy cigarettes, they're both modeled after legal products. As long as you're of age.
Marijuana is illegal. That is just a fact right now.
We don't see heroin inspired or cocaine inspired foods or drinks...at least not any that are advertised as such.
But fine, if we want some marijuana-flavored lollipops, the best we'd get is that only people over age 18 or 21 could buy them. Personally, I have not the slightest desire for a marijuana-flavored lollipop. I don't think this one is worth fighting for. Are these lollipops really that good?

But back to the more key principle. On the other hand, we have fakes of everything. Fake cigarettes, fake beer, fake farts, fake poop, fake pee, fake vomit, fake dead animals. As long as children don't get these pops directly with the label insinuating marijuana, for example, call them "MmmmPops", who cares? This is just more gov't moral-pushing. Fake cigarette candy? That mofo if anything, gets a hell of a lot more kids smoking than these damn pop pops will. Let the adults have the lollipops...they've earned them.

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