Flavored cannabis marketing criticized for targeting kids

NEW YORK (AP) — When New York's first licensed recreational marijuana outlet opened last month, the chief of the state's Office of Cannabis Management, Chris Alexander, proudly hoisted a tin of watermelon-flavored gummies above the crowd.

Outside the Manhattan shop, he displayed another purchase — a jar containing dried flowers of a cannabis strain called Banana Runtz, which some aficionados say has overtones of "fresh, fruity banana and sour candy."

Inside the store run by the nonprofit Housing Works, shelves brimmed with vape cartridges suggesting flavors of pineapple, grapefruit and "cereal milk," written in rainbow bubble letter print.

For decades, health advocates have chided the tobacco industry for marketing harmful nicotine products to children, resulting in more cities and states, like New York, outlawing flavored tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.

Now as cannabis shops proliferate across the country, the same concerns are growing over the packaging and marketing of flavored cannabis that critics say could entice children to partake of products labeled "mad mango," "loud lemon" and "peach dream."

"We should learn from the nicotine space, and I certainly would advocate that we should place similar concern on cannabis products in terms of their appealability to youth," said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia

University who has written extensively about the rise in marijuana use among young people.

"If you go through a cannabis dispensary right now," she said, "it's almost absurd how youth oriented a lot of the packaging and the products are."

Keyes added that public health policymakers — and researchers like her — are trying to catch up with an industry and marketplace that is rapidly expanding and evolving.

New York, which legalized recreational marijuana in March 2021, forbids marketing and advertising that "is designed in any way to appeal to children or other minors."

But New York's state Office of Cannabis Management has yet to officially adopt rules on labeling, packaging and advertising that could ban cartoons and neon colors, as well as prohibit depictions of food, candy, soda, drinks, cookies or cereal on packaging — all of which, the agency suggests, could attract people under 21.

"Consumers need to be aware — parents need to be aware — if they see products that look like other products that are commonly marketed to kids, that's an illicit market product," said Lyla Hunt, OCM's deputy director of public health and campaigns.

Hunt recently saw a cannabis product calling itself "Stony Patch Kids" that she said looked like the popular candy "Sour Patch Kids."