POT EDIBLES AN EVERLASTING PUZZLE

I've always been intrigued by the idea of the Everlasting
Gobstopper.

Conjured by Roald Dahl in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," the
fictional jawbreakers were designed by Willy Wonka for kids with very
little pocket money. They were supposed to last forever, never losing
texture or flavor. Wonka was constantly tinkering with the recipe.

I'm reminded of gobstoppers every time I get a news release promoting
some new medical-marijuana concoction. "Edibles," as the growing array
of products is called, come in everything from apple pie to whipped
cream.

The upside for patients is that they don't have to
smoke.

The downside is that the products, like Wonka's invention, are works
in progress.

Intrigued by the expanding menu of ways to take their medicine, users
are gambling on dosage. Edibles often come unlabeled, with no
ingredients listed or indications of when or where they were made.
They can be inconsistent from one batch to the next, leaving patients
barely medicated after one use but wasted after the next.

"You never know what you're getting," says Billy, a 48-year-old
back-pain sufferer who avoids smoking because he's also asthmatic.

Consider a product by the Colorado-based Dazys edibles maker. This
isn't your grandmother's hard candy. The daisy-shaped confections made
from hashish come in flavors such as sour apple and raspberry lime,
but I'm told taste pretty much like soap. "Product is manufactured
without any oversight for health, safety or efficacy," reads the
label. No joke.

Dazys' "X strongs" and other hard candies are all the rage among young
patients. Candies and chocolates generally are popular among covert
users and those unable to slip out of their routines to light up their
meds.

This is a big season for edibles as patients stock up for
Halloween.

I watched two men dressed as Cheech and Chong buy all nine
mini-cheesecakes at a Capitol Hill dispensary on Friday.

"Dinner party," said Cheech. "Gotta have 'em."

Three young women at a dispensary near the University of Denver made a
run on brownies, cookies and ice cream. Heavily medicated, I'm
assuming, they had this discussion on whether to chase it all down
with some THC soda:

"Too fattening?"

"You think?"

"Come on, you guys, it's a holiday."

The problem with edibles, users say, is quality control. Some complain
that it's unpredictable when the pot will kick in. Others gripe about
labeling.

"You'll see things that say 'triple strength,' but nobody's telling me
what triple strength means," says David Maddalena, a Denver actor and
restaurant manager. "There's no regulation out there for the dosage.
So everybody seems to be kind of making it up."

One new company is trying a more scientific approach by lab testing
and retesting its line of healthier edibles. Simply Pure's Scott
Durrah, a Denver chef, says the market demands more grown-up options.
That's why, all Wonka like, he's experimenting with ginseng and
vitamin B in his sesame brittle and coconut almond cups and with
varying strains of marijuana in his granola bars before taking his
products to market.

Simply Pure did a focus group last week. The feedback shows how tricky
the alchemy of edibles can be.

"I was in the (sic) as high as I was going to get," wrote one
participant. "I was really super high actually but in a very comfy
way."

"Waited 6 hours after ingestion to fill the questionnaire," wrote
another. "No noticed effect."