Pubdate: Sun, 08 Jun 2014
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2014 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Alyssa Rosenberg, Thewashington Post
Page: 5D

STILL A LOT TO LEARN ABOUT USING POT

If there is one thing you can say about New York Times columnist
Maureen Dowd, it is that she knows her brand. Even when she has a bad
high in Colorado and uses it as the peg for a column on the messy
process of marijuana legalization, she does not lose sight of her
Dowdisms. Dowd may have lost her mind via mis-dosage, but in writing
about it, she stays on message by describing "my more mundane drugs of
choice, chardonnay and mediocre-movies-on-demand," blaming a girlish
affinity for chocolate for her misfortune and confessing her stoned
fascination with the green corduroy jeans she was wearing at the time.

But while it is easy to make fun of Dowd's bad experience with
edibles, when it comes to marijuana, there is a good point tangled up
in her column. A majority of Americans may favor legalizing marijuana.
But that does not mean that everyone knows how to consume it in ways
that are pleasurable and safe for them, or that avoid unpleasant side
effects.

Most Americans learn to drink by a process of trial and error,
conducted through well-established rituals and with social support. If
marijuana is to be consumed in similar ways, a lot of new consumers
will have to learn how to toke.

Take Dowd's experience. She got much higher than she wanted to because
she made the not-unreasonable assumption that a candy bar was a single
serving, eating the whole thing in one go. "A medical consultant at an
edibles plant where I was conducting an interview mentioned that candy
bars like that are supposed to be cut into 16 pieces for novices,"
Dowd explains that she finds out later. "That recommendation hadn't
been on the label."

It is one thing for experienced consumers to scoff at Dowd's lack of
knowledge. But she is not going to be alone, and asking for labeling
or instructions is not unreasonable. Similarly, new marijuana
consumers may look to analogous delivery mechanisms and social rituals
when they are smoking joints for the first time, and expect that they
ought to treat joints exactly like cigarettes.

When new marijuana consumers venture beyond products that look similar
to ones they already know, they will have to figure out the answers to
a number of questions.

We figured out a way to regulate alcohol rather than banning it. And
we developed a vision for classy, controlled alcohol consumption, even
if we occasionally tweak that model in response to dismaying social
developments like binge drinking. We should do the same for marijuana.
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MAP posted-by: Matt