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New rules will make producers sell marijuana edibles in single-serving sizes in Colorado
They're already making smaller servings at the Sweet Grass kitchen
They're also making pumpkin pot pie
Dowding (v.): A disturbing, drug-induced experience brought on by the overconsumption of marijuana edibles. Usage: “Aww man, I ate all those cookies and now I’m dowding, hard.”
OK, so “dowding” may not be a real word – yet – but its namesake, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, knows a thing or two about a bad trip. She went to Colorado earlier this year and famously freaked out after eating too much marijuana-infused chocolate.
“I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me,” she wrote of the experience. Or, as Dr. Gonzo might have explained, “You took too much, man. You took too much, too much.”
Related: NYT’s Maureen Dowd inspires effort to educate Coloradans about edibles
Now, thanks to new rules coming on line early next year, marijuana newbies may have an easier time avoiding Dowd’s fate. Starting in February, all recreational marijuana edibles have to come in single-serving sizes or sections. And some of Colorado’s edible makers are already cranking out the personal-sized goodies. 10,000 personal-sized goodies, that is, for each pound of marijuana they produce.
At Sweet Grass Kitchen here recently, executive chef Lauren Finesilver was making a seasonal favorite, pumpkin pie. The single-serving pies, like the chocolate chip cookies, brownies and Snickerdoodles, are made with butter infused with marijuana, or cannabutter. (Cannabis + butter. Get it?)
For her batch of pie crusts, Finesilver used butter simmered in about a half pound of weed and then strained. Butter is the medium of choice because it tastes good and is easy to digest, explained owner Julie Berliner.
And all her single-serving baked goods contain 10mg of THC, about equivalent of smoking a joint, Berliner said. But, it’s a different kind of high.
“It’s more of a body high, when you smoke it’s more psychoactive,” she explained.
But eat too much and you could soon find yourself dowding. And that’s where the smaller sizes come in handy.
“Breaking our products into single servings makes it intuitive for someone to eat one serving and know that if they are going to have more, they actually have to take another bite,” she said. “They don’t have to try to do the math and cut a cookie or a truffle up into several pieces.”
And that should help keep nubes like Maureen Dowd from going to pieces.