Now that marijuana is legal in Colorado for recreational use, that doesn’t mean necessarily that everyone is sitting around toking on pipes and joints, despite what your imagination has led you to believe. And because a whole lot of people, including pot tourists, like to eat their reefer, state officials are taking on the task of regulating those edible offerings.

As funny as it might be to imagine someone giggling over a batch of brownies, consumers ingesting too much marijuana is a serious problem for health officials and regulators. And of course, those who could come to harm by doing so.

To tackle the issue of how to curb such a problem, a task force is meeting today to start refining Colorado’s rules on edibles, meaning, edible marijuana products, reports the Associated Press.

“Basically, we are trying to figure out how to come up with a reasonable THC concentration or amount in edibles in proportion to product safety size,” said one pediatrician who has treated kids who have eaten marijuana and gotten sick.

Eating too much pot can have serious consequences, and not just in children — one Denver man reportedly jumped to his death from a hotel balcony after eating six times the recommended dosage of a marijuana-infused cookie.

It’s especially important because many people eschew smoking marijuana for the edible forms, including tourists to the state who can’t smoke in public or at a hotel. And because it’s a new industry, many consumers just don’t know how much to eat.

The state already limits how much THC can be in edibles to 10mg per serving, with a max of 10 servings in a package. But it’s hard to nail down that potency because of the wide varieties of marijuana available.

State lawmakers are also working on legislation that would require edibles themselves to be marked as containing pot, and not just the containers and wrappers they come in. Another bill would reduce limits on how much concentrated marijuana you can have, like the oils used to make cakes and cookies.

“All of us want to make sure people are safe,” said Meg Collins, executive director of the Denver-based Cannabis Business Alliance and a member of the task force. “The industry is stepping up and is looking at the best ways to educate and communicate to its customers safe ways to recreate with marijuana.”

Colorado works on new rules for edible marijuana [Associated Press]

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