We have said for quite some time that legalizing marijuana carries unintended consequences. A few of those consequences have made the news lately.

In Oregon, this week, news outlets reported a woman overdosed after she ate three gummy candies laced with marijuana.

According to police reports, the candy was purchased in Washington State and brought across state lines.

Police told reporters, “She ate three [pieces of candy], and she was having the kind of reaction we commonly see for people who overdose on heroin.”

Elsewhere, according to news sources, marijuana is causing people literally to blow up their homes.

The New York Times reported last weekend that people in Colorado are using flammable chemicals to extract marijuana concentrate, “sometimes accidentally blowing up their homes and lighting themselves on fire in the process.”

The article’s author writes,

“Over the past year, a hash-oil explosion in a motel in Grand Junction sent two people to a hospital. In Colorado Springs, an explosion in a third-floor apartment shook the neighborhood and sprayed glass across a parking lot. And in an accident in Denver, neighbors reported a ‘ball of fire’ that left three people hospitalized.

“The explosions occur as people pump butane fuel through a tube packed with raw marijuana plants to draw out the psychoactive ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, producing a golden, highly potent concentrate that people sometimes call honey oil, earwax or shatter. The process can fill a room with volatile butane vapors that can be ignited by an errant spark or flame.”

Officials say there were 32 marijuana-related explosions in Colorado in 2014. Colorado is currently weighing the legality of extracting marijuana oils at home.

All of this simply goes to show, once, again, the unintended consequences of legalizing marijuana.

Photo Credit: “Cannabis Plant” by Cannabis Training University – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.