Cannabis packaging sees stricter enforcement of regulations

The Marijuana Regulatory Agency (MRA) reports existing cannabis packaging laws have been less enforced over the past year because of the pandemic.

Certain companies during that time have been making products that could be easily mistaken by children as something safe to eat.

In an effort to mitigate this problem, the MRA is cracking down on packaging.

“These rules are not new, they were always written into law,” said Penny Milkey, general partner of Northern Specialty Health.

Milkey explains edible packaging must make words like THC or CANNABIS-INFUSED larger than anything else.

Additionally, there cannot be cartoons, fruits or images of the actual product.

“They don’t have to just destroy all the packaging they currently have,” said Milkey. “But, we’re trying to be proactive and we want to label things properly at the store.”

Northern Specialty Health is now using stickers on any of its violation edibles to properly label them.

“I’m hoping that people do this correctly,” said Milkey. “So children don’t get access at home. Because my biggest fear is that they would eventually try to write out edibles from our entire market.”

Taking safety a step further, all edibles do have child-resistant packaging.

The problem sometimes is that adults will cut the seal or will leave edibles out. Which appear to kids like a regular brownie or bag of gummy worms.

“As a storefront, as a retail center, we can sticker these and make them non-child attractive the best we can. But, it’s ultimately up to the responsible adult in the home,” said Milkey. “We have three kids, we tell them what it is, we tell them that it’s medicine. We tell them don’t take it. Just like cough medicine or Tylenol.”