Authorities in Colorado say a man fatally shot himself after consuming five marijuana-laced candies, making his the third death in the state linked to edible marijuana.
Luke Goodman, 23, from Tulsa, Okla., died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the Colorado town of Keystone, a statement from Summit County Coroner Regan Wood said.
"According to witnesses, the decedent had consumed a large amount of edible marijuana candies prior to his death," the statement said.
Goodman was on a family skiing vacation when he and his cousin Caleb Fowler purchased $78 worth of marijuana candies.
"He was excited to do them," Fowler said.
Goodman ate two, but when they had no immediate effect, he kept eating more, Fowler said, until he had consumed five, ingesting five times the recommended 10 milligram dose each candy contained.
After several hours Goodman became incoherent and was talking nonsense, Fowler said.
When family members accompanying Goodman on the vacation left the condo they were staying in, Goodman refused to join them.
At some point, he apparently took a handgun he regularly kept for protection when traveling and turned it on himself, authorities said.
Goodman's mother has blamed the marijuana.
"It was completely a reaction to the drugs," Kim Goodman said.
She says he probably didn't notice the warning on the marijuana candies that says, "The intoxicating effects of this product may be delayed by two or more hours ... the standardized serving size for this product includes no more than 10 mg."
Her son was a happy person and displayed no signs of depression or thoughts of suicide before the incident, she said.
"It was 100 percent the drugs," she said. "It was completely because of the drugs — he had consumed so much of it."
Colorado approved the recreational use of marijuana by adults in a 2012 ballot vote, as did Washington state. Alaska's law legalizing marijuana use by adults in nonpublic places took effect in February, and Oregon's law allowing adults to posses up to an ounce of marijuana in public and 8 ounces in their homes will take effect July 1.
There have been two other deaths in Colorado linked to edible marijuana.
In March of last year, a student from the Republic of Congo attending college in the U.S. fatally jumped from a hotel balcony in a Denver hotel after reportedly eating six times the recommended amount of cannabis-laced cookies.
The following month, a Denver man was arrested after being accused fatally shooting his wife, who was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, reporting that her husband was hallucinating and frightening her and their three children.
Kim Goodman says she would like to see edible forms of marijuana removed from store shelves.
"I would love to see edibles taken off the market ... I think edibles are so much more dangerous," she said.
