Colorado Deaths Stoke Worries About Pot Edibles

From ABC News, where there is more:

A college student eats more than the recommended dose of a marijuana-laced cookie and jumps to his death from a hotel balcony.  A husband with no history of violence is accused of shooting his wife in the head, possibly after eating pot-infused candy.

The two recent deaths have stoked concerns about Colorado's recreational marijuana industry and the effects of the drug, especially since cookies, candy and other pot edibles can be exponentially more potent than a joint.

Twenty-six people have reported poisonings from marijuana edibles this year, when the center started tracking such exposures.  Six were children who swallowed innocent-looking edibles, most of which were in plain sight.

A Colorado law enforcement official had this to say:

"Sadly, we're going to start to understand over time all of the damage and all of the problems associated with marijuana," said Thornton police Sgt. Jim Gerhardt, speaking in his capacity as a board member of the Colorado Drug Investigators Association.  "It's going to dispel the myth that there's no downside, that there's no side effect, to this drug.   It's sad that people are going to have to be convinced with the blood of Coloradans."

Read it all.

A clergy friend of mine with contacts in the local high school says that the number of times the police have been summoned to the high school to deal with intoxicated students has more than doubled in the three months since recreational marijuana became legal in Colorado.  Although students are too young to purchase marijuana legally, the increased use of illegal marijuana by students seems to be the result of the signal being sent by the state's legalization of the drug, which is that this is just another adult pleasure to try if you can.

What we are seeing is a tragedy in the making.  Please pray for Colorado. 

(If there is any upside from this whole situation, it is that other states may think twice about legalizing marijuana after looking at what has happened in Colorado.)