A man is suing the Portland, Oregon cannabis dispensary Arcanna for $10,000 after he says he was recommended an excessively potent cannabis product that landed him in the emergency room, The Oregonian reports.
The plaintiff in the suit Skye Fitzgerald claims that an employee of the shop, despite being informed that Fitzgerald was a novice consumer, recommended that he purchase an excessively potent THC syrup. When Fitzgerald got home, per the employee’s advice, he followed the directions on the bottle and consumed about a teaspoon of the syrup, or about 40 milligrams of THC, according to the suit.
He ultimately went to the emergency room for symptoms including “muscle spasms, psychomotor agitation, elevated heart rate, extreme discomfort, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, hypokalemia, and muscular paresis,” and the doctors there “diagnosed him with THC overdose,” the lawsuit says.
The shop’s managing director Kris Snider said in the report that because the product purchased by Fitzgerald had been approved by the OLCC, Arcanna couldn’t be held at fault for Fitzgerald’s bad experience. Additionally, he said budtenders have no way of knowing customers’ tolerance levels and that the budtender who serviced Fitzgerald had recommended only taking “a few drops” of the syrup.
“At the end of the day, it’s like going to a bar and asking the bartender ‘How much alcohol is going to get me drunk?’ You don’t hear of anybody suing the bar because somebody got drunk.” — Snider, via The Oregonian
Notably, Oregon state law requires cannabis edibles to carry a maximum serving size of 10 mg but the rules don’t explicitly address serving size limits for cannabis tinctures, concentrates, or extracts, which the syrup product could have fallen under.
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