Do you make LSD gumdrops? Pot lollipops? Coke and cokes?

If so, beware: Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, are sponsoring legislation that could send you to prison for a long time.

The Protecting Kids from Candy-Flavored Drugs Act, introduced Thursday after a similar bill failed to pass in the last session of Congress, allows for 10-year sentences or two decades for repeat offenders.

The penalties would apply to people who combine Schedule I or Schedule II drugs with “a candy or beverage product” with knowledge or “reasonable cause to believe” the product will be “distributed, dispensed, or sold" to minors.



Drugs listed as Schedule I -- a Controlled Substances Act designation for products that have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical value -- include marijuana, MDMA (also known as ecstasy or Molly) and heroin. Schedule II drugs include cocaine, methamphetamine and amphetamines.

The bill also would cover Schedules I or II drugs that are “modified by flavoring or coloring" and items that ”appear similar to a candy or beverage product.”

Feinstein and Grassley, the oldest current senators, were joined in sponsoring last session’s bill by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who’s crusaded against candy-flavored electronic cigarette liquids.

Introducing the bill, Feinstein said Oregon law enforcement officers recently informed her they were having problems with Xanax-laced gummy bears (Xanax is a Schedule IV drug and would not be covered by the bill) and were seeing many MDMA-laced pacifier pops and candy bracelets.



Feinstein also addressed marijuana products, saying in 2013 federal agents seized pot-laced brownies, cookies, candies and soft drinks from “phony medical marijuana dispensaries” in California and that police near Philadelphia that year confiscated a large amount of pot-laced candy from an on-campus college apartment.

With state-level marijuana legalization spreading across the country and an explosion of edible and drinkable pot products on store shelves in Colorado and Washington, the bill may seem alarming to the cannabis industry. All marijuana possession outside limited research remains a federal crime, and although the feds generally look the other way, zealous prosecutors remain able to bring charges -- and with the bill could heap on more possible prison time.

But Mason Tvert, a Colorado-based spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, says state-level regulation works to deincentivize distribution to minors -- which would trigger the proposed penalties -- and thus far has come with tight rules for marketing and packaging.

“Regulated marijuana businesses are following these rules, and they do not want to do anything to jeopardize their licenses or trigger other serious penalties,” he says. “Illegal dealers, on the other hand, are breaking the law regardless of what products they are selling, how they market them and to whom they sell them.“



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The bill’s legislative record gives an unclear picture of how likely it is to succeed. In the last three sessions of Congress the bill attracted just one co-sponsor: Before Blumenthal, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and now-former Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., were co-sponsors. The bill did, however, unanimously pass the Senate in 2010.

Unlike previous versions, the reintroduced bill allows for a sentencing enhancement for other drug crimes if prosecutors decide against bringing standalone charges.