... perceptive Colorado.

New Jersey legislators should look into the issue. A recent report from a Colorado organization devoted to keeping children away from marijuana advocates for potency limits on cannabis products, which continue to get stronger and stronger. "This is very different from marijuana in the 1980s," says Rachel O'Bryan, co-founder of Smart Colorado, whose mission statement notes that the outfit "engages and informs Coloradans on the risks that marijuana poses to youth." The average marijuana flower sold by Colorado stores went from THC 16.4 percent in 2014 to THC 19.6 percent in 2017, an increase of nearly 20 percent. Evidence supports a trend will end anytime soon. Marijuana concentrates tend to be much more potent than cannabis flower. THC potency went from 56.6 percent in 2014 to 68.6 percent three years later — a jump of around 21 percent and a far cry from an average rate of 3.8 percent calculated by the National Institute on Drug Abuse circa the 1990s. That's possible, because the state has no potency limits in place, even though the health department" — specifically the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment — "says these products haven't been proven safe. If you go to the department's website, they acknowledge that 'we don't know about the safety of dabbing, we don't know about the safety of vaping.' These products haven't been studied, and our regulators are behind the eight ball. We are not keeping up with the market." A call for restrictions is nothing new. Amendment 139, which would have limited the THC potency of marijuana products to 16 percent and put packaging and labeling rules into the Colorado Constitution, was heavily promoted in 2016 before proponents withdrew the measure. As for Smart Colorado, "we've been pushing for limits since almost the first year of legalization," O'Bryan points out. "We thought potency limits were necessary, and we got the state on board back in 2014 when it came to edibles." Among the reasons, she'd like to broaden this mandate is a 2018 study based on data from the Netherlands "which everybody likes to rely on. It showed that when they discouraged higher potency products, the number of people seeking treatment for marijuana went down." Sample offerings at retailers in Colorado are: 35 percent THC bud, a THC-infused brownie, 73 percent THC shatter, a THC-infused lollipop, a 74 percent THC hash oil syringe, THC-infused breath mints, THC-infused coffee and an e-cigarette with THC.

Taken continually will foster overdosing and dealt.