It was no surprise Tommy Chong showed up in Colorado last Sunday at the so-called Mile High 420 Festival. The onetime comedian and sometime actor was best known for his marijuana use, which he parlayed into his one claim to fleeting fame.

Of course, Chong’s 15 minutes of minor stardom ended sometime in the ‘80s. The I’m-too-buzzed-toremember- my-own-name gag is only worth so many yucks, after all.

Which made it all the more pathetic when the 86-year-old pothead, who nowadays hawks pot-derived CBD products, took the mic at Denver’s Civic Center Park to cheer marijuana use with a few thousand revelers — blithely oblivious to the toll the substance has taken on states like Colorado that legalized recreational weed, and their kids.

Sure, if you’re old enough to remember, you probably laughed at Chong’s “Dave’s not here” skit with fellow stoner Cheech Marin. But it’s not so funny anymore, and not just because the routine got old.

As pot has gotten more potent and pervasive since legalization, a lot of damage has been done — from surging traffic fatalities on roadways to THC-induced psychosis in youth. In hindsight, Chong’s high-as-a-kite inability to realize it was his own friend Dave at the door decades ago seems less like sketch comedy than a sobering forewarning.

Chong visited Colorado at a time when questions are being raised as never before about Big Marijuana as an industry and the perils of pot itself. Evidence is mounting about the dire health consequences of consuming the drug and about its safety record as a retail product under Colorado and other states’ far-from-rigorous system of regulation.

A landmark investigation by The New York Times explored how doctors are contending with the effects of an “explosion in the use of the drug and its intensity.” The report found “with more people consuming more potent cannabis more often, a growing number, mostly chronic users, are enduring serious health consequences.”

“…Accumulating harm is broader and more severe than previously reported. And gaps in state regulations, limited public health messaging and federal restraints on research have left many consumers, government officials and even medical practitioners in the dark about such outcomes,” The Times report said.

Meanwhile, a Denver Gazette investigation, citing industry insiders and researchers, found Colorado’s retail-marijuana regulations are riddled with loopholes that allow consumers to be deceived about everything from pot’s potency to the prevalence of dangerous pesticides, solvents and mold.

Alongside all of that is the depressing, hard data. Like the fact that 43% of Colorado teens 15-19 years old who die by suicide have marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient, THC, in their system at the time of death. For Hispanic teens in that age range, the number climbs to 49%. For Black teens it’s a devastating 67%. That’s according to the Colorado Department of Health and Environment’s Violent Death Reporting System.

Only predatory pot peddlers and their heavily bankrolled lobby would deny the link between marijuana and its many maladies across marijuana- legal states.

The same could be said of their allies in state legislatures. In Colorado, they killed an effort this year to add some reasonable restraints to marijuana sales to keep it from falling so easily into kids’ hands. Even more incredibly, another effort is now pending in the Colorado Legislature to relax regulation of retail pot and double the amount of pot that can be sold in a single transaction.

The consolation is that pot sales overall have been falling since the pandemic, and we only can hope the slide continues. It is one industry we cannot wish well.

As for Chong, he’s certainly welcome in Colorado anytime. But it would be refreshing if, on his next visit, he passed up the local pot shops and met instead with researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health. They could brief him on all the harm marijuana has done.

It’s a safe bet he’d find nothing to laugh at.

— The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo. via TNS