When celebrated New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd in June wrote about nibbling a pot-filled candy bar then living through eight hours of paranoid hell in a Colorado hotel room, it raised a new awareness to the dangers of the marijuana tourism business in the Mile High state.
Now a pro-pot group is taking her concerns to a new level. On Wednesday they are unveiling a Denver billboard and a huge new public relations campaign that warns tourists who’ve just arrived: “Don’t let a candy bar ruin your vacation. With edibles, start low and go slow.”
The billboard shows a woman similar to the Pulitzer Prize winning Dowd sadly sitting on a hotel bed.
The Marijuana Policy Project told Secrets that the campaign is aimed at helping other marijuana tourists to go slow, especially with edibles that take longer in providing a high.
The Project said that their effort “encourages them to start with a low dose of THC and go slow when consuming edible marijuana products, which can take up to two hours to feel the effect. The billboard features a distressed woman in a dark hotel room, alluding to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s now-infamous June column detailing her over-consumption of a marijuana-infused candy bar in her Denver hotel room.”
The PR campaign directs viewers and readers to a special website, “ConsumeResponsibly.org,” which features information about marijuana products, their effects, and the laws impacting them.
“For decades, efforts to educate people about marijuana have been led by government agencies and organizations that want to maintain marijuana prohibition,” said Mason Tvert, the project’s director of communications.
“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,” he said, adding, “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.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
