In March 2022, Colorado public health officials started getting startling reports of liver damage tied to a new marijuana-based sleep aid that had quickly become a top seller in the state.

But it wasn’t until June 2023, nearly 15 months later, that the state’s Marijuana Enforcement Division would warn consumers that the danger had become so serious that the manufacturer had halted production of the sleep pills, called 1906 Midnight Drops, after more reports of “acute liver injury.”

The delay highlights a slew of weaknesses in the system for protecting consumers from hazardous products in the nation’s first regulated recreational marijuana market.

The health complaints had prompted the division to investigate, but the agency decided it didn’t have the power to pull the drops from the stores in this situation. If the agency had dug deeper, it might have found what the state attorney general’s office later discovered: The manufacturer, Sima Sciences, began receiving complaints of harm shortly after it launched 1906 Midnight Drops and two years before health officials ever did.

Instead, the enforcement division took four months after the first report of liver damage to the state to post a notice on its website. But the agency didn’t call it a health and safety warning, which would have advised people not to consume the product. It released a more neutrally named “informational notification.” While there had been reports of “adverse health events,” the notice said, regulators didn’t find any violations. The manufacturer had reformulated the product, the notice added, and no additional issues had surfaced.

Jenifer Chatting didn’t even see it.

A surgical assistant at an oral surgeon’s office, Chatting wanted a safe, natural alternative to pharmaceuticals to treat her insomnia. So she was relieved when a local marijuana dispensary suggested a sugar-free option made of cannabis and herbal extracts that the manufacturer touted as the “the best sleep aid on the market.” She began taking the Midnight Drops nightly the same month that the state health department received its first complaint.

Unaware of the enforcement division’s notification, she didn’t worry when she started having full-body cramps and became lactose intolerant in September 2022, about six months after she started taking the drops. She thought she just needed to drink more water.

She continued taking the drops for nine more months until her dispensary stopped stocking them. Now, despite never having liver problems before, according to her medical records, she has liver damage at age 53; her doctor says she will ultimately need a transplant.

Colorado’s failure to get Midnight Drops off the market or to warn consumers to stop taking it despite repeated reports of harm was not an anomaly, The Denver Gazette and ProPublica found.

The division has limited authority to force companies to recall products. The agency instead relies on posting health and safety advisories on its website to warn the public, and on sending news releases to local media outlets.

Yet, in the cases for which the news organizations were able to identify the date of a complaint or the start of an investigation, it took regulators an average of more than seven months to issue a warning. That’s an incomplete snapshot because the division refused to release data on when investigations began. Complaint dates were private, it said, because the probes were ongoing — even years after the warnings were issued and some companies had surrendered their licenses.

Still, The Denver Gazette and ProPublica were able to identify initial complaint or investigative start dates for 23 of the 83 advisories the agency issued over the past five years by reviewing other licensing violation records.

Seven months is a long time for products that are typically smoked or ingested within days of purchase, industry insiders and consumer safety experts said. In comparison, federal investigators have criticized the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for taking an average of two months after learning of a potential hazard to not just warn consumers but to get companies to recall contaminated food.

Kimberly Anzarut, a former Denver marijuana regulator and now an industry consultant, said the delays mean Colorado consumers aren’t getting vital warnings while products are still on shelves.

“When you take a really long time to get a bulletin out to tell people about these issues, a lot of time, people have already consumed the product,” she said.

Lab directors said it generally takes only three days to return test results identifying contaminants, and if there’s an emergency, they can do so in a day.

But MED spokesperson Heather Draper said in a statement that it’s more complicated than just getting test results and that it takes time to build a case that leads to a health and safety advisory.

“This most often requires investigative resources to evaluate the scope of concerns, gather evidence of potential product safety concerns, and receive test results that indicate a contaminated product has been sold to consumers,” she said.

Thuy Vu, Denver’s former........

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