They were products that were readily available when we discussed legalization in states like Colorado and Washington. As someone earlier mentioned, it's a growth area in the cannabis marketplace. Obviously, if you're concerned about public health, you want to move people away from smoking product into enjoying their cannabis. If it's for medicinal purposes, there are therapies in non-smoking forms. As we've mentioned, and as mentioned in the task force report, the edible market is growing. It is varied.
We also know there's a demand. If you want to move from the illicit market into a regulated legal market, then you have to offer the quality and choice that the illicit market can provide. It's fair to say that we heard that over and over again from a wide variety of people we talked to. There are public health reasons and public safety reasons why you would want to authorize or allow edibles in various forms. We have discovered that the forms in which they come are only limited by one's imagination.
It's fair to say that we heard a note of caution coming out of Colorado and Washington. What was their single biggest surprise out of the box? It was how much demand there was for edibles. One of the things they told us was that we have to be ready for that. We need edibles in our regulated market, but to make sure we're ready. Make sure that we don't make the same mistakes they did, which was to have somebody eat a whole chocolate bar. When you're eating an edible, it takes longer if you're looking for the high. Thirty minutes in, some guy who has consumed two squares of chocolate says he doesn't feel anything and eats the whole bar. Colorado had to go back in and fix all that, and the private sector wasn't very happy about the additional cost.
You want to be cautious. You want to make sure that you get the edibles piece right, because it is possible to make those kinds of bad judgments or mistakes in terms of consumption. You need to make sure your labelling is accurate, that your warning labels are there, and all of that. You need to be cautious around edibles out of the box. Learn from what we've seen in other jurisdictions, but absolutely, they have to be part of the consumer choice going forward in a regulated market.