New Ad Campaign Urges Cannabis Consumers to Learn From Maureen Dowd's Marijuana Mistake

A new new public
awareness campaign in Colorado, aimed at encouraging
responsible use of marijuana edibles, features a billboard that
alludes to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s

famously unpleasant encounter with cannabis-infused
chocolate:

Mason Tvert, communications director at the Marijuana Policy
Project, which is sponsoring the ad campaign, explains:

For decades, efforts to educate people about marijuana have been
led by government agencies and organizations that want to maintain
marijuana prohibition. Their campaigns have been characterized by
fear mongering, misinformation, and derision, and they have not
made anyone safer. Like most Americans, Ms. Dowd has probably seen
countless silly anti-marijuana ads on TV, but she never saw one
that highlights the need to “start low and go slow” when consuming
marijuana edibles.

Now that marijuana is a legal product like alcohol in some
states—and on its way to becoming legal in others— it needs to be
treated that way. That’s where the Consume Responsibly campaign
comes in.

MPP highlights how far we’ve come in “A
Brief History of Marijuana Education in America.”

I
discussed the special hazards posed by cannabis-infused foods
in a column last July. Short version: Edibles are indeed tricky,
but consumers are not as helpless as Dowd portrays them.