Pubdate: Thu, 12 Jun 2014
Source: Palm Beach Post, The (FL)
Copyright: 2014 The Palm Beach Post
Contact:  http://www.palmbeachpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/333
Author: Maureen Dowd, New York Times
Page: A11

LEGALIZED POT CALLS FOR NEW EDIBLES EDUCATION FOR USERS

In the last chapter, I covered how not to get high. In this one, I 
will cover how to get high.

After my admission that I did a foolish thing in Denver - failing to 
realize that consuming a single square, about a quarter, of a pot 
candy bar was dicey for an edibles virgin - many in the pot industry 
upbraided me for doing a foolish thing.

But some in Mary Jane world have contacted me to say that my 
dysphoria (i.e., bummer) is happening more and more in Colorado.

Justin Hartfield is the California founder of Marijuana.com and 
Weedmaps.com (a sort of Yelp for pot), and an entrepreneur involved 
in some of the nation's top marijuana-technology companies.

"Your experience points out a significant need for standardized 
dosing, testing and labeling," he told me, recalling a similar 
vertiginous paranoia spiral when he and his wife split a pot brownie 
in Amsterdam.

On Friday, Marijuana. com launched an ongoing guide to "the best 
practices towards both consumption and sale of edibles." It urged 
every dispensary in Colorado and throughout America to follow 
Amsterdam's lead and put up signs warning about the dangers of 
oversampling psychotropic treats.

Hartfield said Weedmaps is providing pamphlets, posters and video to 
dispensaries and users, including an "Edibles Education" pamphlet 
with headings like "Start Small," "Wait" because edibles take two 
hours or longer to take effect, and keep "Out of Reach" of children.

"Edibles are not the best delivery device in general for marijuana 
because it's notoriously hard to control the titration in your 
stomach," Hartfield said. "When you smoke it's so easy. You have a 
hit, it affects you immediately. Then you can decide to take another 
if you want to get higher. With edibles, it hits your stomach all at 
once, and holy Nelly!"

Some Colorado pols are nervous about stories like that of the 
Longmont mother who found her 2-year-old daughter eating a pot cookie 
in front of their apartment building and the two 10-yearolds in 
Greeley who were caught selling and swapping pot purloined from relatives.

On Wednesday, the state task force met to forge a rule denoting 10 
milligrams as a serving, so that the dosage is clearly demarcated. 
And on Friday, Gov. John Hickenlooper signed legislation proposing a 
banking solution for the mainly cash pot business.

As the black market comes into the light, the hang-loose community 
can be uptight about any moves to regulate or put contours around the 
sale of pot to better protect neophytes, teenagers and children. 
Perhaps because they have spent so much time fighting to move past 
the old "Reefer Madness" caricature, the reefer crowd gets mad at the 
suggestion of any regulation, no matter how small or helpful.

Also, as one Colorado political aide pointed out: "There's so much 
money involved. This is a group of people who probably never thought 
about money, and now a lot of people just have dollar signs in their eyes."

Laughing, he noted, "The weirdest thing in the world is to hear from 
an angry pothead who finishes a tirade about rules with 'dude.' "
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom