Too bad Dowd didn’t experiment with 16x too much heroin.
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Perhaps the NYT can send her to cover this year’s poppy crop.
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Eh, it’ll be mandatory cardio testing soon enough; finally, getting cosmic oneness with what your editors’ cardiologists’ 17-year-plan for you is.
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Firstly, I agree with others above that this is not mocking people’s bad experiences on drugs in general, but is mocking this particular person’s fairly sensationalised depiction of cannabis use.
However I do strongly agree with you that the legal packaging of extremely high doses of pure THC as confectionery that looks, tastes, smells and is in every way like unmedicated confectionery is unbelievably reckless, and bound to lead to unnecessary trauma. I can’t believe its not regulated tightly.
While comparisons to alcohol are apt, at least in Australia you can’t package alcoholic beverages in ways that clearly target minors, and alcohol still has a taste that might help prevent accidental consumption.
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Ha, the Guardian Comment Is Free article has nice farther comments re: Krauthammer on krocodil, etc. So what’s the antidote to acting in peppermint ointment-face (or Sarah Jeong’s schtick otherwise) for the unsweetened policy side of packaging professionals then, an app or speech-enhanced arduino (language package of the week?) calling card that walks though ‘processed in a mind which has also processed mochi, Mahlurur, plantains, and pesto after magic fruit’ while trying to keep the experience affirming?
Some other notion, to keep journos having taken …hours of lecture about whole-plant charcuterie and its market, from acting in revolt?
A little flowchart bot maybe? c.f.: How many varieties of tomato is too many? 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! …
What does it taste like when you try to make out more than that? What if you mix bread and pasta?
Well then, perhaps the organic varietal catch-all tappas is not the best accompaniment for the next 11 hours?
Not physically dangerous. Look up peer reviewed articles discussing marijuana overdose deaths or permanent disability. The ones that get released are always discredited. Wikipedia notes that to fatally overdose you would need 40,000 times the dose you need to get high.
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The Friedman one is indistinguishable from his real output.
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Avoiding doing dumb stuff like making and packaging pot edibles that look like candy is probably going to need to be part of how it happens.
It’s going to happen whether people make candy out of it or not. Don’t fall for the bullshit hype against the candy. There’s plenty of sugary alcohol mixed drinks and candy that have survived calls for a return to alcohol prohibition. Marijuana edibles will survive as well.
The overwhelming majority of people that consume the edibles don’t have issues. As time goes on, the reefer madness hysteria will fade as we forget about idiot, attention-seekers like Maureen Dowd and instead focus on the many average people who enjoy it without issues.
That said, I would agree that there should be clear packaging for edibles, etc. – but Colorado is already dealing with that as we speak.
I’m also getting a little tired of two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right arguments like the lack of warnings on alcohol packaging.
I assume you were referring to my post above. I’m not making a two-wrong argument. I don’t think there should be labels on alcohol. I think there should just be education based upon facts and science so people can make up their own minds about it while also keeping it out of the hands of children. Considering how much safer marijuana is than alcohol, I think it’s more than rational to expect the same for that as well.
That’s my point. My other other point is to also show the inane hypocrisy from all the people hyperventilating over marijuana decriminalization while slamming their shots of vodka on the weekends. I don’t have a problem with responsible drinkers, I have a problem with asshole hypocrites that think they can partake in their more harmful drug of choice while demonizing others for partaking in a vastly less harmful drug. Fuck that.
There’s a bunch of propagandistic, half-truth bullshit coming from the media and authorities against marijuana. For example, the news shows will have a “debate” on marijuana and talk about the Colorado guy who killed his wife after eating edibles while completing leaving out the fact that he was abusing prescription drugs and his wife even said it on the 911 call just before she was murdered by him. How about you save some of your angsty-angst for those liars that omit facts and are the true problem with stymying decriminalization?
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Jeez, Cow, we’re on the same side, I think. The key point in my post was that in order for the industry to be successful, there will need to be lots of new customers, including a great many newbies. Spending extra time educating them will pay dividends in public perception and customer satisfaction. It would be best if that happened without regulatory involvement, but doing dumb things like making it look like candy (think of the children!) is asking for trouble.
Also, regarding labels on alcohol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Loko#Restrictions_on_sale
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That’s because Advil IS TOXIC
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Hmmm… where’s that kind of warning on a vastly more dangerous drug called alcohol?
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As far as the overall subject. I hate edibles. I just hate them. Never had any fun with them. Never had a terrible time either, but I learned back in the day that the next 72 hours would be a weird time… and that’s just not my thing.
I don’t see anyone dying, getting organ damage, or suffering irrevocable psychotic breaks from it, so I’ll just MIND MY OWN BUSINESS on this matter.
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I’ve known several people who were given edible dosage information AND an explicit warning to avoid the temptation to consume more than the recommended dose who still went ahead and took too much. They had a bad time. I have little sympathy for people who don’t extensively research the psychoactives they’re going to consume. At least in this case, eating too much weed will only result in a really uncomfortable time, nothing serious unless there’s some kind of interaction with prescription medicine they’re taking.
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Cow, we’re on the same side, I think.
I think so as well, but we may not agree on the candy issue. I think you implied they should stop making candy, but I think that’s counterproductive in the long run. In the short term, it may appear to appease the most ignorant and shrill detractors of decriminalization, but they’ll just shift focus to another hyperventilating slant against the demon weed the next day. To them, it’ll just be a tacit admission that marijuana is too dangerous for decriminalization and they’ll point to the candy production withdrawals as an example – despite the fact the overwhelming majority consume edibles every day without issues.
There’s no argument from most on either side as far as basic labeling goes. I don’t think marijuana edibles shouldn’t be labeled as such, for example. But, what people like Dowd want is ridiculous warnings that scare and mislead people.
Once again, if marijuana is so dangerous, why is Dowd still alive after taking too much of it? (Keep in mind she lied in her article about how much she consumed) With other drugs like alcohol she’d likely be dead or in the hospital instead of whining about her panic she had after stepping out of her confined mental bounds she’s been in her obviously over-sheltered, ivory-tower life.
Should people be warned about unpleasant side effects of consuming too much edibles? Yes, just as people are warned about the very dangerous side effects of consuming too much alcohol. But, this bullshit of embracing false equivalence (or much worse, saying edibles will turn people into murderers) and implying marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol is bullshit and for the fucking birds.
If anything, what better way to make marijuana a gateway drug for alcohol abuse? When kids hear all the pyscho-killer fear-mongering against marijuana and they try it and find out that’s bullshit – they’ll likely ignore the very real warnings against alcohol when it’s inevitably put in front of them.
All this fear-mongering is dangerous and irresponsible, and Dowd should be ashamed of herself.
The key point in my post was that in order for the industry to be successful, there will need to be lots of new customers, including a great many newbies. Spending extra time educating them will pay dividends in public perception and customer satisfaction.
I’m for some of that as well (in reason) minus the irresponsible hyperventilating and overblown fearmongering that seems to go along with it from some of the most vocal proponents.
I’d also like to see multiple, comprehensive, independent, unbiased, scientific studies on edibles to find out what the risks are for the majority of people who are not genetically predisposed to have some sort of mental illness.
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Hmmm… where’s that kind of warning on a vastly more dangerous drug called alcohol?
en.wikipedia.org
Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act
Right, but read the warning. It just says it impairs your driving, pregnant women shouldn’t drink it and it “may” cause some amorphous health problems.
That’s it.
That’s nowhere near the kind of shrill warning that people are suggesting for marijuana and that’s my point.
Also, do note my context. I asked where’s the overdose warning on alcohol as people are suggesting for marijuana.
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nothing serious unless there’s some kind of interaction with prescription medicine they’re taking.
Aww, c’mon… That’s not shrill. Let’s be “real” here and do the same kind of fine reporting that Dowd does…
I’ve witnessed a none-too-bright guy with diabetes who already had a propensity for going into diabetic shock and turning into a drooling idiot who speaks in tongues when he didn’t eat enough food, etc. Well, he ate a bunch of marijuana brownies on an empty stomach and didn’t proceed to eat anything afterward and things went south.
Well, he ended up turning into a drooling idiot who speaks in tongues.
MARIJUANA CANDY WILL TURN YOU INTO A DROOLING IDIOT WHO SPEAKS IN TONGUES.
There, now we’re back on track here! 
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This is worth examining. Compare to the next best thing that we have evidence for. Evidence currently is that graphic warning labels on tobacco actually does reduce smoking, although the amount and in what populations are under dispute.
The Canadians got something like 2 to 5% reduction after they implemented their graphic warnings on cigarette packs. It’s not the same here in the US, and everything I’ve read on it suggests that teens are going to do it anyway, but graphic warnings for cigs do increase their ideas about quitting. In the other age groups I think the warnings do have an effect, probably similar to Canada (single digit reduction). These are the warning labels with pictures of blackened lungs and tumors and yucky stuff like that.
So, why don’t we plaster beer, wine, whiskey, gin and vodka with big pictures of mangled bodies draped around steering wheels and telephone poles? Why don’t we show a few head injuries of motorcyclists who tried to ride home from the bar drunk? A couple of dead kids hit by a drunk?
Of course at face value that sounds absurd. But why? It’s a complicated question. Smoking as a Public Health issue has a long and storied history. As a major public health topic in media, it came first, starting with Doll & Hill in the UK in the late 1940’s. Smoking’s ill-effects started a firestorm that raged and is still raging. The one bad thing that smoking (among many bad things) was connected to early was lung cancer. From the start, with relative risks of around 17 to 1 for smoking doctors getting lung cancer, smoking was stigmatized. It took another 40 years before C. Everett Koop convinced Reagan to let him start an earnest campaign of demonizing smoking. This would never have happened if smoking was not associated with lung tumors. If smoking were simply “bad for you” no such demonization would ever have occurred. It had to be awful, ugly, incurable and horrid. And think how many people still smoke, today. Even though those horrors are common knowledge. We resist.
Now switch back to alcohol. Could an anti-alcohol campaign happen in the modern age? Not likely. It has definitely been demonized, through the efforts of MADD and various other orgs and changes in clinical practice. But it has not yet been successfully connected with 1 awful, pervasive, incurable form of COOTIES that nobody wants to get. You can justify alcohol. You can say, Oh, I’ma get drunk but no I won’t drive. And justify your pursuit of the substance. Pretty much without repercussion. You can live with increasing hypertension, weight gain and even liver disease for a looooong time.
I’d put alcohol-related deaths (direct & DUI) on a par with lung cancer. (I’m well aware that smoking does a lot more than lung cancer: stroke, vascular disease, other lung diseases, etc). Are alcohol-related deaths just as horrible as lung cancer? To me, sure. Dying of being smothered in my own bed by my fluffy pet is a horror. But in the media? News reports of DUI deaths? News reports of lung cancer hospice deaths? Alcohol is in the eye more. Has it been successfully demonized, if that’s what it takes? Nope.
Finally, wrapping back around to marijuana. The anti-pot people did successfully demonize pot with reefer madness, the Drug War, all the Mexican Cartel horror, etc. But it’s crumbling. Bullshit articles like the Dowd one might have a temporary bolstering effect on the already-indoctrinated crowd. But thinking long-run Doll & Hill style, C. Everett Koop style utter demonization of a practice, will articles like it have an impact? Also nope. So yeah it’s BS, but they’ll never get it to Smoking Bad level of demonization. And as much as it might make sense for the public’s health, alcohol labeling won’t ever get there to that level either because it’s a hard sell to demonize it completely.
Sorry cigs, you’re out. (LOL, there will always be smoking…) Pass me that single malt. You guys can have the weed; I have stuff I need to do.
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Yeah, I do have to wonder if Dowd’s article is so ridiculous that she inadvertently helps decriminalization in a way. Maybe she’s our stoned mole on the inside. 
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Related:
Pot edibles hater Maureen Dowd should stick with what she knows – booze and pills
http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2014/06/pot_edibles_hater_maureen_dowd_booze_pills.php
excerpt:
Edibles are an alternate way to consume marijuana. On the ones I have purchased, there is an advisory to wait one to two hours for the effects. There is also a guide on what one portion is and the dosage of THC in it. I can read. It seems pretty simple to me. Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker. Maybe she just stick to what she knows…alcohol and prescription drugs.
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Also you heard about the kid who’s facing LIFE here in Texas for baking pot brownies as a prank? They admitted the entire weight of the brownies as the amount of the drug in question. Talk about brainless zealots.
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