The Dangerous Ingredient in 1906's Sleep Pills Was Never the THC

The sleep pill that dominated Colorado's dispensary shelves did its damage with an ingredient no cannabis testing rule ever looked at. A ProPublica and Denver Gazette investigation, published September 4, lays out the record on 1906 Midnight Drops: 52 reports of harm to the state health department by May 2024, at least 20 serious enough to need medical care, and a regulator that took 15 months from the first liver-damage report to tell the public the manufacturer had stopped making the product. The company marketed the drops as "the best sleep aid on the market." By 2023 it made 81 percent of the pills sold in Colorado dispensaries, according to the analytics firm BDSA.

The THC was 5 milligrams. The problem was the plant next to it. Midnight Drops contained corydalis, a root extract from traditional Chinese medicine whose active compound, tetrahydropalmatine, has a documented link to liver injury. When the reports started, the company reformulated with Stephania, which regulators later concluded carries a compound with the same chemical makeup. The label changed. The risk, by the state's own reading, did not.

The takeaway first: when a sleep edible lists an herbal extract, that extract is the ingredient to look up. The THC and the CBN are known quantities. The thing you cannot pronounce is the variable. Our sleep ranking has leaned toward products with no botanical adjuncts for exactly this reason, and this story is that reason made concrete.

What went wrong with 1906 Midnight Drops?

Colorado's health department received its first reports of liver damage tied to Midnight Drops in March 2022. The Marijuana Enforcement Division posted an "informational notification" in July 2022, a lower tier than a health and safety advisory, and did not issue a second notice until June 2023, when the manufacturer halted production. Twenty-five of the harm reports arrived before that second notice.

The July 22, 2022 notice is worth reading for what it does not do. It states that the agencies are "not requesting or requiring" that the product be removed from shelves and relays the manufacturer's assertion that batches made on or after March 1, 2022 contain no corydalis. By August 17 the company's website featured Stephania instead, same marketing language, same plant illustration.

In December 2022, Dr. David Cristin, a gastroenterologist, told the enforcement division he had seen four patients with elevated liver enzymes in two months. The second notification came on June 1, 2023, citing further reports of "acute liver injury" and the production halt.

Jenifer Chatting, a surgical assistant, started taking Midnight Drops in March 2022, the same month the state received its first complaint, after a dispensary suggested them as a natural alternative to prescription sleep drugs. Nine months later she had cirrhosis. Her gastroenterologist ruled out alcohol and cited an herbal sleep aid as the likely factor. Her enzymes normalized after she stopped, but the damage stayed, and she has been told she will eventually need a transplant. She never saw either state notice. When the drops vanished from her dispensary, a staffer told her customers had been abusing them. She and her husband are suing. The company denies their claims.

Why didn't cannabis testing catch it?

Because state testing rules screen cannabinoid potency and contaminants such as pesticides, microbes, and heavy metals. No required test evaluates the pharmacology of a botanical additive. Corydalis passed every mandated test because none of them looked for it. The failure sits in ingredient review and adverse-event response, and Colorado's system is weak on both.

Colorado runs what the reporters call an honor code: manufacturers choose the samples and the lab. Regulators floated a rule in January that would have lab staff collect samples, which is how 26 of the 42 state marijuana markets do it, then backed off after large manufacturers said it would raise costs. Products that fail a test can be retested on no fixed timeline, with sales often continuing meanwhile. Missouri puts an immediate hold on anything that fails and keeps it held until a retest clears it.

On response time, the newsrooms found a complaint or investigation start date for 23 of the 83 health and safety advisories the division issued over five years. Across those, the average gap between the start and the public warning was more than seven months. The division would not release the remaining dates.

The division's spokesperson, Heather Draper, told the reporters that at the time its powers were limited to holds and recalls tied to specific violations, and that a 2023 statute change now lets it hold product over safety concerns even without a violation. A real improvement, arriving after Midnight Drops had left the market.

Is 1906 still on the market?

In Colorado, no. Sima Sciences, its affiliated companies, and co-founder Peter Barsoom settled with Attorney General Phil Weiser on September 19, 2025, paying $400,000 and agreeing not to sell cannabis products in the state until at least 2027. The settlement is limited to Colorado. 1906 products sold elsewhere operate under other states' licenses and are unaffected by it.

The attorney general's investigation found the companies knew of health concerns as early as 2020, kept manufacturing, failed to disclose the risk, and misrepresented the product's benefits for sleep. The companies denied violating consumer protection law. Barsoom's statement, quoted by ProPublica, said the company had let its customers down and was "sorry that we didn't act faster."

One more disclosure, because it applies to us. EdibleRank has recommended 1906 tablets in several rankings, Midnight Drops among them, and our brand review still describes the Midnight formula with its original botanicals. Those pages are on the list for a correction pass.

What does a sleep edible label actually tell you?

The cannabinoid line tells you what got tested. The botanical line tells you what did not. Melatonin, L-theanine, and chamomile are widely used and well characterized. Root extracts with unfamiliar names are where a compound like tetrahydropalmatine hides, and no certificate of analysis will mention it, because no lab was asked to look.

This is why our medical-use guide keeps pointing readers toward single-mechanism products at trial-relevant doses. A 5mg THC tablet plus 100mg of a root extract is a supplement with a cannabis license, and the supplement half has no gatekeeper.

Barsoom said in 2017 that his competitors were "chardonnay, Xanax and coffee, not other edibles." The part of the pill that behaved like an unregulated pharmaceutical was the herb, and the herb got what a real pharmaceutical never gets: a sales floor with nobody checking. Three years and 81 percent of the market later, the state got around to saying so.