Marijuana-Infused Gum

Marijuana-Infused Gum Company Started By An Ex-Facebook Employee 

"What I love about this industry is that it is brand-new and growing. It's so exciting and changing every day," Heimark says. "I was part of tech, and I've seen what that felt like. I can tell you this feels the same, if not even faster growing."

Two years ago, Heimark, a Bay Area native, was working as a project manager at payments startup Gumroad, which has nothing to do with actual gum. But he wanted to run a company. A friend sent him a link to a "60 Minutes" episode about how the marijuana industry was growing up and attracting big dollars in Colorado, where recreational marijuana has been legal since 2012. Heimark considered his experience maximizing profits and minimizing payment fraud at Facebook (and his role at Gumroad) and packed his bags for Denver. He rented an Airbnb and joined a marijuana startup accelerator called Green Labs for $450 a month. One day, some projections about the edibles market crossed his desk. He crunched more numbers. He sent the data to his dad, the former chief information officer at Swiss bank UBS. Edibles and other infused products are taking a bigger bite out of the $5.4 billion legal marijuana industry with every passing year. It's often the consumption method of choice for people using marijuana for medicinal purposes and those who just don't want to smoke. Weed-laced treats offer a discreet way to get high in public, and a single dose can power users through the worst bouts of illness-induced nausea or a marathon Netflix binge. But they offer a completely different experience than a joint or a bong hit. When eaten, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in weed, undergoes a transformation in the liver that turns it into a different substance that's twice as strong and lasts twice as long as when it's inhaled. A user high might not peak until one to three hours after eating. Because it takes so long to process, people often overdo it. While there are no recorded cases of people fatally overdosing on marijuana, it can make patients incredibly uncomfortable. But gum isn't digested. You chew it.  Heimark hypothesized that a marijuana-infused gum would be absorbed through the cheeks and gums faster than the digestive tract. It's the same reason why doctors administer medicine under the tongue. If medical marijuana patients got high more quickly, they might find relief from their ailments and say no to second helpings too soon after their first dose. Heimark and his cofounders, Roy McFarland and Justin "Crunchy" Crunchington, poured over recipe books from the Denver library and spent every night trying new recipes in the kitchen. Turns out, making gum is hard to do. Harder still, the guys had to find a way to make the chemical compounds in marijuana stick to the gum and not rub off on user's teeth. Ideally, the finished product wouldn't taste like an ashtray. It was a tall order. Today, Plus Gum delivers psychoactive effects within 15 minutes of chewing, Heimark says. He credits a "secret sauce" contained in their pending patent for improving taste.  Each Chicklet-like piece of gum provides 25 milligrams of THC, though Heimark claims its potency doesn't feel like a dose that large because the drug never gets digested. He compares the high to drinking two beers. Plus Gum is available in 65 dispensaries across California. Recently, Plus launched its second product, a tin of marijuana-infused gummies. They co-opt some science developed for the gum to make the gummies fast-acting, though not as swift. As the company gears up for the possible legalization of recreational marijuana in California this November (and an expansion to Colorado in 2017), Heimark expects an infusion of new customers. He says these times remind him of working at Facebook.

Marijuana Candy A New Look To Avoid Confusion

Does my brownie contain weed? Colorado has you covered

A requirement that edible marijuana products come with a diamond-shaped stamp and the letters T-H-C not just on the packaging but on the brownies, candies and other edibles themselves takes effect Saturday.

The rule referencing marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient was added after complaints that the treats look too much their non-intoxicating counterparts. It is the first such requirement in any legal weed state.

Colorado’s new “universal symbol” for foods that contain marijuana is designed to give the treats a distinct look even after they’re out of the packaging. In other words, a pot cookie being passed around a high school cafeteria no longer will look so innocent, giving parents a way to identify marijuana edibles without smelling or tasting them.

The stamping requirement comes in addition to exhaustive labeling and packaging rules that include childproof zippers and lids, along with warnings that the product should be kept away from children and not eaten before driving or while pregnant or nursing.

“We want to ensure that people genuinely know the difference between a Duncan Hines brownie and a marijuana brownie, just by looking at it,” said state Rep. Jonathan Singer, a Democrat who sponsored the law requiring stamped edibles.

There are no numbers in Colorado or any marijuana state on how many children or adults accidentally eat pot. But a 2016 study tracing admissions at Children’s Hospital Colorado just outside Denver found that more kids were treated for accidental pot ingestion after legalization, from 1.2 per 100,000 population two years prior to legalization to 2.3 per 100,000 population two years after legalization.

Marijuana ingestions remained relatively rare, though, with the hospital reporting 81 children treated for accidental pot ingestion between 2009 and 2015. Authors noted that “poor child supervision or product storage” was present in about a third of those cases.

Still, reported accidental ingestions caught lawmakers’ attention. The law was passed more than a year ago but is just now taking effect because of difficulties implementing it. None of the other legal weed states has considered a universal symbol requirement for marijuana products themselves, as opposed to the packaging.

Candies and baked goods may be simple to stamp, but the label requirement gets a lot trickier for bulk items such as granola, or marijuana-infused sodas or powders that can be dissolved in water. The state ultimately settled on new packaging rules for those impossible to stamp items, requiring that sodas come in small single-serve bottles, for example.

Colorado also requires that edible packages contain the phrase, “Keep out of reach of children.”

At BlueKudu, which makes marijuana-infused chocolates, owners had to buy new molds for a line of candy bars that include flavors like mint chocolate, toffee almond and coffee crunch.

Company founder Andrew Schrot said that when he started his company in 2011 for medical marijuana customers, his pot treats looked like any other chocolate bars. But he said the switch to a recreational market in which new marijuana users were trying his products necessitated change.

“This is not your normal chocolate bar. There’s something different about it. You can tell just from looking at it,” Schrot said.

Colorado’s marijuana industry initially was hesitant about the change, pointing out in regulatory meetings that alcohol makers aren’t required to dye their drinks funny colors to make sure parents don’t let kids get ahold of the booze.

“Some of the industry expectation was, ‘Let’s keep it on the parents and the users in keeping it away from children or people who shouldn’t use it,'” Schrot said. “But you know, sometimes mistakes happen. You turn your back and a product is left out.”

Colorado has no estimate of how many accidental ingestions might be avoided by the stamping. Starting next year, the state also will ban any edible marijuana products in the shape of a fruit, animal or human in addition to existing bans on the use of cartoon characters on packages or other images deemed attractive to kids.

“It’s really a step in enhancing public safety and making sure that marijuana is out of the hands of children,” said Ron Kammerzell, head of enforcement for the state Marijuana Enforcement Division.