Gondwe, 23, one of the students and a friend of Thamba, told investigators that the cookie was purchased at a downtown marijuana store, Native Root Apothecary, on the 16th Street Mall. Advertisement 
 
 An employee at the store told them to "cut the cookie into six pieces and to only eat one piece at a time," the police report said. Over the next few hours, the man showed erratic speech and hostile behaviors, the report said. Approximately 3.5 hours after initial ingestion, and 2.5 hours after consuming the remainder of the cookie, he jumped off a fourth floor balcony and died from trauma. Officials determined that marijuana intoxication was the chief contributing factor to the man's death, which occurred in March 2014. An autopsy found that the man's blood levels of THC were above the legal limit for driving a car in Colorado. According to the police report, the decedent had been marijuana-naïve, with no known history of alcohol abuse, illicit drug use, or mental illness. In addition to listing inactive ingredients, the cookie label described the psychoactive ingredients as "65 mg THC/6.5 servings (THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, the principal psychoactive agent in cannabis)." According to the police report, the sales clerk had instructed the buyer and decedent to divide each cookie into sixths, each piece containing approximately 10 mg of THC, the serving size, and to ingest one serving at a time. "This case illustrates a potential danger associated with recreational edible marijuana use," the report said. [Where Americans Smoke and Grow Marijuana (Maps)] 
 
 In 2012, Colorado legalized the recreational use of marijuana, and stores selling the products opened in 2014. Because absorption is slower, the onset of effects is delayed (with mean peak plasma concentration at 1–2 hours after ingestion, in contrast with 5–10 minutes to peak plasma concentrations if smoked), and duration of intoxication is longer when THC is ingested compared with when it is smoked (7). The marijuana store where the implicated cookies had been purchased voluntarily gave all 67 remaining cookies of the same brand to the Denver Police Department. All of the 67 cookies had THC levels that tested within "required limits," the report said. "Because of the delayed effects of THC-infused edibles, multiple servings might be consumed in close succession before experiencing the 'high' from the initial serving, as reportedly occurred in this case," the report said. On the basis of initial surveillance data in Colorado and numerous cases of accidental overconsumption, on February 1, 2015, Colorado instituted new packaging and labeling rules, requiring that recreational edible marijuana products contain no more than 10 mg of THC, or have clear demarcation of each 10-mg serving (8). Although the decedent in this case was advised against eating multiple servings at one time, he reportedly consumed all five of the remaining servings of the THC-infused cookie within 30–60 minutes after the first serving, suggesting a need for improved public health messaging to reduce the risk for overconsumption of THC.
– There's a saying in the health care world: dose matters. It certainly did in the case of 19-year-old Levy Thamba, a native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo who was studying at Wyoming's Northwest College. While in Denver with friends on spring break in March of 2014, the teen jumped to his death from a Holiday Inn balcony after ingesting a whole lot of weed. In this week's Morbidity and Mortality report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention review his death, the first "linked to marijuana consumption without evidence of polysubstance use" since pot became legal in the state in 2012. (The lemon poppyseed cookie was purchased legally by a 23-year-old friend; Thamba, however, wasn't of age and therefore didn't consume the pot legally.) The police report stated he initially ate just the recommended single portion of the cookie; some 30-60 minutes later, still feeling no effects, Thamba—called "marijuana naive, with no known history of alcohol abuse, illicit drug use, or mental illness"—ate the whole cookie, constituting 6.5 servings. Roughly 2.5 hours later, Thamba exhibited "hostile behavior," according to his friends. He had no other drugs in his system at the time he jumped, and his death was ruled an accident. The legal blood limit for THC for drivers in the state is 5.0 ng/mL; his blood level was 49 ng/mL. LiveScience reports that regulations were put in place in February regarding the labeling of edible marijuana items; if they contain more than 10 mg of THC, each 10 mg serving must be clearly indicated. The cookie Thamba ate contained 65 mg. (Thamba's friends reportedly tried to calm him.)