Pubdate: Thu, 12 Jun 2014
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Copyright: 2014 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Leland Rucker

WHAT YOU READ ABOUT CANNABIS ISN'T ALWAYS THE TRUTH

You remember Keith Kilbey? Well, perhaps not by name, but you 
probably do remember him. He's the young man who plowed into two 
police cars blocking an Adams County exit ramp in January and was 
arrested for driving under the influence of drugs. Guy was so stoned 
on pot, the state patrol said, he couldn't even see the warning 
lights flashing on two police cars. It made local and international 
news and why not? For hungry media, it was just too good a story.

Kilbey's arrest was played large across television, internet and 
newspapers. Cannabis had been legalized in Colorado just 10 days 
before, and the world's press had plenty of space to fill. The state 
patrol got ahead of the game, quickly identifying Kilbey as a poster 
child for the dangers of driving stoned.

"This time we were fortunate," said a spokesperson, "but many 
officers across the nation are not so lucky."

It was a good story, one of those that get people talking, except 
that it wasn't quite true. As Radley Balko wrote in the Washington 
Post last weekend, Kilbey was stoned. But he was also drunk. Deadly 
drunk. The only relevant fact that wasn't mentioned by the state 
patrol was that Kilbey blew a .268 on his alcohol test. The legal 
limit is .08. That is dangerously drunk, which is relevant in this case.

A Denver Post story on Feb. 10 reported that neither Kilbey's summons 
nor the accident report mentioned cannabis. In fact, Balko reports - 
and meticulously links to all the media sources he mentions - that 
the first time alcohol is mentioned as the leading factor in the 
Kilbey story was after his trial last Thursday, in a Denver Post 
story under the headline "Drunk, stoned driver takes plea deal after 
car crash in Adams County."

Huh? Finally we find out that Kilbey did have cannabis in his system, 
more than the state's new legal limit. But someone who tests three 
times over the legal alcohol limit is much more likely to do things 
like run into parked police cars than someone who has ingested 
cannabis alone. But as we used to say in the newspaper business, 
nobody remembers the correction. Five months after the fact, most 
people will just recall the headlines about the stupid, stoned driver 
and the dangers of cannabis and driving.

Another round of cannabis headlines appeared last week in response to 
New York Times' columnist Maureen Dowd's June 3 column that detailed 
her bad night in a hotel room after ingesting too much of a cannabis 
edible during a Colorado visit in January.

"I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in 
a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours," Dowd wrote. "I was 
thirsty but couldn't move to get water. Or even turn off the lights."

Fortunately, cannabis is not lethal. Unlike with alcohol or 
prescription drugs, you can't overdose, and the effects go away, 
though, like Dowd, they might take longer to leave the body than 
expected. Dowd had a bad night, but she's still the same queen of 
snark we all know and love. One person's euphoria is another's paranoia.

Dowd was trying to use a personal story to make the point that 
Colorado has "some kinks that need to be ironed out with the 
intoxicating open bar at the Mile High Club." That's hardly news in Colorado.

More education about edibles and consistency of product are two 
things that have to happen, and both the state and shop owners are 
working on them.

By all means, if you're inexperienced around cannabis and interested 
in edibles, take Dowd's experience to heart. Among the many reasons 
edibles are popular is because smoking turns many people off. When 
you smoke cannabis, it enters your body through your lungs, and you 
can feel the effects almost immediately. When you eat cannabis, it 
enters through your digestive system. and it can take a while for the 
effects to begin. So if you don't feel anything after a while, you 
might consume more. That's what Dowd admits doing, and it was 
unpleasant. I suggest novices use a vaporizer to find out if you like 
the experience before moving into edibles. And don't do it by 
yourself in a hotel room.

I have experienced varied reactions to edibles. I had a couple nights 
when, somewhat like Dowd, I just curled up in a chair with my iPod 
and headphones. But I can also remember long walks through the 
redwood forests in California that were even more magical after 
eating an edible about an hour before we headed into the woods. In a 
sense, context is everything.

But even Dowd, who was never in any real danger, referenced two other 
big-headline cases that police linked, at least originally, to 
cannabis use: the death of 19-year-old Levi Thamba, who ate an edible 
sometime before jumping to his death from a Denver hotel balcony, and 
Richard Kirk, a Denver man who shot his wife, apparently after eating 
cannabis and too many prescription drugs.

Despite the early headlines, we still don't know exactly what 
happened in those two cases. Headlines aside, cannabis legalization 
in Colorado is rolling out pretty smoothly. Media will continue to 
focus on the bad rather than the good. But until we find out more 
about all these cases, be careful what you're reading out there. And 
don't miss Balko's investigative look into the Kilbey case. Things 
are not always as they seem.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom