"The caramel-chocolate flavored candy bar looked so innocent, like the Sky Bars I used to love as a child." — Maureen Dowd, columnist for The New York Times.
We certainly applaud food tourism. But if you are headed to Colorado this summer, you might want to exercise some portion control … but not for the usual reasons.
Dowd clearly had some problems with her marijuana edibles, as profiled in Tuesday's column.
The "worst" of it for Dowd is that she "lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours."
Dowd got advice the next day that she clearly needed before eating the candy bar: "candy bars like that are supposed to be cut into 16 pieces for novices; but that recommendation hadn’t been on the label."
Like a good journalist, Dowd threw herself into her quest to sample the marijuana edible at full force. If Dowd had followed the advice, there would be no column.
We don't know from the column how long Dowd waited once she arrived to eat the candy bar. Having been in the Canadian Rockies in 2012, higher elevations can mess with you. There's a reason why John Denver sang about "Rocky Mountain High."
Dowd might be better off exercising that right in Washington state, though that state has been really sssllooooooww in implementing legal marijuana. Soon, you will be able to get pot-infused coffee in Washington state. That product might be more Dowd's speed.
Marijuana edibles serve a significant purpose where marijuana is legal. Smoking pot has many drawbacks. Some physically can't handle smoking. The smell turns off some people. And it's more obvious that you are consuming pot when smoking it.
The marijuana edibles world is similar to how things go in the food world: a little goes a long way.
Eating 1/16 of a candy bar seems eccentric. However, a marijuana edible is not a regular candy bar. In fact, if you do it right, you might want a regular candy bar … or three once the marijuana edible has kicked into form.
Dowd pointed out a couple of extreme cases in the column. Same message for Dowd goes for everyone: a little bit goes a long way and know how much you can handle. Same goes for food, though not for the same reasons.
Marijuana edibles are not food in the traditional sense, even if they look like food. Perhaps the labels should reflect that better (a marijuana leaf on the package, perhaps) but we live in a country where front labels can be pretty deceiving.
Know what you are putting into your body: food or drug or both.
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