City Council
[email protected]
June 13, 2023
Assemblymember Irwin
1021 O St
Room 6220
Sacramento, CA 95814
RE: AB 1207 (Irwin) – SUPPORT
Dear Assemblymember Irwin,
On behalf of the City of San Marcos, we are pleased to support AB 1207 (Irwin), which would enact the Cannabis Candy Child Safety Act to ensure edible cannabis products are not attractive to children through advertising, marketing, packaging, and labeling of the cannabis products. In addition, this bill would ban the use of flavors in cannabis used for inhalation.
When Proposition 64 was passed, one of its clearly identified intents was that “Marijuana products shall be: “Not designed to be appealing to children or easily confused with commercially sold candy or foods that do not contain marijuana." Child exposure to and consumption of cannabis is neither necessary nor an acceptable by-product of a legal cannabis market.
It has been concerning to witness the evolution of the first 5 years of legal sales has not respected these promises. Inexplicably, regulations weakened, rather than enforced, these protections, failing to put in place systems to assess and prevent products from being attractive to children or to resemble conventional candy or food typically marketed to kids.
This has had several types of adverse consequences for California children and youth. The first is the explosion of accidental ingestions of cannabis products by young children who should never be exposed to cannabis. In San Diego, children under age 10 testing positive for THC quadrupled since 2016, mostly from edibles, of which three quarters were from candies or gummies.
A robust legal cannabis market can flourish without marketing products that are clearly attractive to children. AB 1207 will implement key measures to protect children and youth, more clearly defining and prohibiting products, packaging and marketing that is attractive to children or teens, that imitates foods typically marketed to children, or that does not clearly signal appropriate dosage of edibles.
For these reasons, the City of San Marcos is pleased to Support AB 1207. Please feel free to contact me at (760) 744-1050, or [email protected], whenever needed.
Sincerely,
Rebecca D. Jones
Mayor
2 cc: League of California Cities (Via email: [email protected])