Maureen Dowd’s Weed Candy Experiment Personifies White Privilege

Newsone ^ | Jun 4, 2014 | Terrell Jermaine Starr

[nickcarraway]

Maureen Dowd, author of “Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk”, speaks during a panel discussion during a luncheon at the Book Expo America convention, Saturday, June 5, 2004, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Brian Kersey) I never smoked marijuana before, and Maureen Dowd‘s haphazard experience with a weed-laced candy bar in her Denver hotel room certainly isn’t motivating me to book a plane ticket to what is soon to be dubbed the “Mile High State.”

The New York Times columnist was in Colorado reporting on the state’s first months of legalized marijuana use when she decided to take what she later learned was too much of a bite from a “caramel-chocolate flavored (marijuana) candy bar.” Dowd wrote in a column Tuesday that the treat didn’t affect her at first, but after an hour or so, she felt like she was dying:

But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me. It took all night before it began to wear off, distressingly slowly. The next day, a medical consultant at an edibles plant where I was conducting an interview mentioned that candy bars like that are supposed to be cut into 16 pieces for novices; but that recommendation hadn’t been on the label. Dowd’s column in its entirety is pretty innocuous, given that she wasn’t doing anything illegal and, I guess, was “on the job.” But given her lofty status as a Times writer and the privilege that comes with such a position and the fact that she is White, there is something quite disturbing about her recreational use of a drug that has lead to disproportionate arrests of thousands of African-American and Latino people who don’t have the privilege of getting high and writing about it for an international publication.

I also find it ironic that the states (Colorado and Washington) with some of the least ethnically diverse populations have legalized the drug. With a population that is 88 percent White, the only thing Whiter than Colorado’s population is its ski resorts.

Despite the fact that Whites and Blacks use marijuana at the roughly the same rate, a Black person is 3.73 time more likely than a White person to be arrested for possessing the drug, according to the ACLU. And even after running on a platform to end racially unjust arrests, Blacks and Latinos made up 86 percent of marijuana arrests in the city during the first quarter of N.Y. Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s administration–even as overall arrests declined. What is more disturbing about these figures is that arrests were significantly higher in Black and Latino neighborhoods as oppose to White communities whose use of the drug is similar, according to the Marijuana Arrest Research Project.

For me, the distinction is clear: If you are Black or Latino and in a neighborhood comprised mostly of people of color, your use of marijuana is seen as criminal. If you are White, not so much.

This is why Dowd’s piece disturbs me so much. Twitter reactions to Dowd’s use of the weed almost came across as, “Aww, that’s so cute,” but I have to wonder what the reactions would have been had an African-American female reporter gone to Colorado and done the same thing. Sure, she wouldn’t have gotten arrested, but I doubt the Twitterverse would have been as jovial.

Dowd’s piece also is a recent reminder of the double standard I notice when Whites and Blacks experiment with drugs. In April, VICE published a YouTube video of one of its correspondents in South Africa experimenting with a dangerous cocktail called “nyaope,” a drug laced with HIV medication.

Maybe it’s me, but I find it curious how drug use by upper-middle class White people can become an intellectual discussion on the residual consequences of drug legalization or the misuse of medication when so many Black men and women who do the same thing are viewed through the lens of criminality.

When publications like VICE or the New York Times publish pieces on their journalists’ reports on personal drug use — who are almost always White, by the way — they normalize the use of drugs by White people without considering how minorities often see the media as criminalizing them for similar actions.

I grew up in a drug house in Detroit, where any kind of drug was available. I never had an interest in them and never used. Perhaps the time when a rival gang broke in to my house when I was 12 years old and beat my drug-dealing uncle so badly it took two weeks for my grandmother to clean up all of the blood made me less than enthusiastic about taking a toke of the sticky green. The .375 Magnum one of the dealers pointed at the back of my head as they severely beat my uncle didn’t help either.

While I never had any use for drugs, that doesn’t stop people from assuming that I, a Black man from inner-city Detroit, used every drug imaginable.

During a get-together with a group of friends, in which I was the only Black person in a room of Whites, one of them asked us to describe our first experience with drug use. One by one, each of these middle-class suburbanites named drugs ranging from speed, cocaine, weed laced with cocaine, and other drugs that made me blush in discomfort. When my turn came, all eyes zeroed in on me as if I was going to reveal a magic cocktail for them to take home. They were very disappointed when I said I have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

“Come on, Detroit!” one of my friends said.

“Nope. Never,” I replied.

However, if Maureen Dowd and I were walking down the street in New York City, the cops would likely stop me on suspicion of marijuana possession before they would stop the Pulitzer Prize winner who wrote a national column on getting stoned in the Mile High City.

Of course, you wouldn’t be able to tell if Dowd was a Times writer who wrote a piece about using marijuana; however, people always seem to be able to “tell” that I must have used drugs.

I wonder why?

[FreedomPoster]

Nicely done!

[greene66]

This article on “white priviledge” is pathetic.

Maureen Dowd herself is pathetic.

Colorado, for becoming a dopehead state, is pathetic.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

What are those?

Glaucoma and as a palliative for nausea and loss of appetite while undergoing Chemo.

There are a number of other things it is claimed for but those are the only two reason I know that are truly accepted as medical treatments.

[RetiredTexasVet]

If you are stupid, it is best to keep your mouth shut and let them wonder rather than confirming it .... obviously she hasn’t learned much even after so many “teachable moments” in her drab undistinguished life.

[lostboy61]

Pretty lite weight lib reporter if you ask me. In the good old days 60s-70s a lift wing nut job could smoke all night and still get to a anti war rally the next day.

[GeronL]

It is a lot more potent now than what was around in the 60’s

[firebrand]

Some nice perspective here.

[ruesrose]

Well I suppose obama is hearing about this for the first time through the media, huh?

[Pearls Before Swine]

What is the white privilege here? Can’t blacks visit Colorado and buy pot-laced candy?

Is the author advocating wider relaxed drug laws so blacks (and whites) won’t have to travel? Or does she just want to stick it to Whitey by having miserable drug laws everywhere?

Or is it a voting problem—only a white majority state would be privileged enough to relax drug laws?

I found this article to be logically incoherent.

[firebrand]

Also, newcomers, who have only inhaled, do not seem to realize that ingested pot takes quite a bit longer to reach the brain than inhaled pot. They don’t feel anything, so they take more. Whoops. They don’t catch on till they find themsebrowsing in Tiffany’s china department when they’re supposed to be working.

No one has mentioned the paranoia and hallucinations. Marijuana is not a safe drug.

As for the antiwhite cast to the piece posted here, what else is new? Someone could make a great parlor game out of this.

[firebrand]

themselves

[fr_freak]

I have some knowledge in this area, so let me help some of you get a better perspective on this stuff:

1) I have no doubt that mj grown now is much stronger than the 70s stuff. How much stronger? Who knows? But stuff now is stronger than stuff from 5 years or more ago, so we can do some interpolation.

2) Eating the stuff cooked into food (if done properly) is WAY more potent than smoking it. And by WAY more, I mean WAY WAY WAY more. The amount that a person could comfortably smoke in one sitting would put that person in a uncomfortable stupor if eaten.

3) One of the dangers of edibles is that, once you get stoned from eating it, you might get the munchies, and, lacking judgment, then snack on the remainder of the edibles. The snowball effect would be of monumentally horrendous proportions.

4) If, as Dowd claims, she had never tried pot before this, then her tolerance was low, but, more importantly, her understanding of its effects and what to expect would be zero. I find it hard to believe that anyone would be stupid enough, even Maureen Down, to try a drug for the first time alone in a different city. On top of it, she apparently ate a dose intended for several people at least and, mind you, each does is calibrated to get experienced users high.

What Dowd did (if her claims are true) would be the equivalent of a life-long tea-totaller going to a bar and slamming 16 shots of all the strongest liquors in the place (except too much weed won't kill you, while 16 shots at once probably will), then writing an article about how evil alcohol is.

[Georgia Girl 2]

I hate a woman who can’t hold her weed. :-)

[nickcarraway]

1) I have no doubt that mj grown now is much stronger than the 70s stuff. How much stronger? Who knows? But stuff now is stronger than stuff from 5 years or more ago, so we can do some interpolation.

How do you know?

[dware]

Marijuana is not a safe drug. Lol. You're funny. I find the anti-pot crowd hilarious. Their arguments based solely on propaganda, such as "Reefer Madness" and outrageous hit pieces like this article. Interestingly enough, it's also usually the very same people who scream when the leftists try restricting other freedoms. Got your hatred of pot from God? Go read Genesis 1:29 and then get back with me. Bottom line? Don't like it? Don't eat smoke or buy it. It's that simple. Pot is a plant, like any other. It does not require any chemical additions, it won't explode while growing in someone's backyard, and does not hurt anyone but the user, and even that's arguable. It doesn't cause professional types to suddenly abandon their work ethic, and really, the only thing to get abused by someone smoking dope is a bag o potato chips. It's infinitely safer and has much fewer side effects than alcohol and Rx drugs. The potential for medical uses is astounding, including the ability to treat symptons of such issues as PTSD. There might be a slight downside to its use, but those are highly small and far between. I wish folks, particularly those that preach freedom, would learn the truth before spouting off about something they clearly know nothing about.

[GeronL]

bump

[Rebelbase]

The antidote!

[mac_truck]

4) If, as Dowd claims, she had never tried pot before this, then her tolerance was low, but, more importantly, her understanding of its effects and what to expect would be zero. I find it hard to believe that anyone would be stupid enough, even Maureen Down, to try a drug for the first time alone in a different city. On top of it, she apparently ate a dose intended for several people at least and, mind you, each does is calibrated to get experienced users high.

Concurring bump.

Dowd would have been better off letting someone she trusted and who was experienced guide her down that path.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Usually for medical purposes it is smoked (or vaped) slightly, emphasis on slightly. This was el stupido. Neither would one want to wolf down a whole bottle of aspirin.

[HiTech RedNeck]

For someone who isn’t looking for relief from an illness, I’d tell them all day long that this is an unwise thing to smoke.

But the ultimate problem is PEOPLE responsibility. Pot never smokes itself for someone. People smoke it.