Here's the thing: tolerance to alcohol does not increase to nearly the same extent as weed. Compare two people of the same weight and gender with different tolerances to alcohol: the one with a higher tolerance (e.g. someone who drinks an average of four drinks per day) only needs 1.5-2x as much as the first person to reach the same level of desired intoxication. Even an extreme alcoholic probably needs < 4x as much as someone who rarely drinks to feel a similar level of intoxication.
With weed, someone who never smokes might get insanely high off of a single hit (say, 1/6th of a bowl) from a bong. Someone who smokes a few times a week might need to smoke an entire bowl for similar effects. Someone who smokes almost every day might need to smoke 2-4 bowls to get to that level, and if someone smokes multiple times every day, they may need to smoke an entire joint or turn to concentrates to get there. So in this case the heavy smoker wants 20x what the non-smoker wants due to the difference in tolerance. What could get a novice uncomfortably high could be unnoticeable to a heavy smoker.
With regard to " bag of something (bitter orange chips?) that kids won't eat outright, that comes in low/variable dosages just enough to chill with, that will allow you to drive your kids to the hospital should the need arise", in my opinion this product already exists. If you use a vaporizer the intake is so slow that you can simply stop inhaling when you reach however high you want to be. Even with other methods, you can simply smoke a single "hit", wait ~5-10 minutes, see if you want to smoke more, then repeat. And there are definitely low-dose edibles out there in the form of gummies/lollipops that are analogous to your example, except that they're not always bitter. The problem with edibles is that you can't "titrate" them like with other RoA's because the onset is too delayed.