Maureen Dowd: 'I knew everyone would make fun of me' for getting too high on marijuana edibles

Business Insider

Maureen Dowd knew the internet would make fun of her getting too high on legal pot in Colorado, but she didn't care.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist said she often doesn't mind being the protagonist in her own columns so long as her personal stories provide insight to readers she would be unable to covey otherwise.

"I don't mind making a fool of myself if I think it'll amuse the reader or make a larger point," Dowd told Business Insider on Wednesday while promoting her new book, "The Year Of Voting Dangerously."

In 2014, Dowd chronicled her negative experience eating a marijuana candy bar purchased at a newly-legal pot shot in Colorado, saying she"couldn't move" and "barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours."

Dowd said she anticipated that her infamous 2014 bad trip would garner mockery online, but she argued she could prove that edible manufacturers were not giving amateur users enough warning about consuming too much.

"I knew that everyone would make fun of me, but I had read enough to know that they needed better labeling," Dowd said. "People were in danger because they had this whole new tourist industry coming in, and they weren't telling them what they needed to know about how long the edibles took to take effect."

During Wednesday's interview, the Times columnist suggested she's still open to the possibility of getting high with folk star Willie Nelson, a staunch marijuana advocate who offered to get high with her after reading about her bad trip in 2014.

But in light of one of the presidential candidate's professional background, Dowd said she see's a better opportunity for her next foray into marijuana experimentation.

"Maybe Gary Johnson," Dowd joked, referencing the Libertarian presidential candidate's recreational marijuana habit and past as the CEO of a medical marijuana company.

"He can teach me, and I'll teach him what Aleppo is. We can trade."

Johnson's campaign did not immediately respond to Business Insider's inquiry about whether the governor would be interested in taking Dowd up on her offer.

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