Dude, do drugs responsibly.

• Author: Dowd, Maureen
• Position: Editorials

Byline: MAUREEN DOWD

In the last chapter, I covered how not to get high. In this one, I will cover how to get high.

After my admission that I did a foolish thing in Denver -- failing to realize that consuming a single square, about a quarter, of a pot candy bar was dicey for an edibles virgin -- many in the pot industry upbraided me for doing a foolish thing.

But some in Mary Jane world have contacted me to say that my dysphoria (i.e., bummer) is happening more and more in Colorado.

Justin Hartfield is the California founder of Marijuana.com and Weedmaps.com (a sort of Yelp for pot), and an entrepreneur involved in some of the nation's top marijuana-technology companies. As The Wall Street Journal noted in a profile last March, the 30-year-old former high school pot dealer wants to be "the Philip Morris of pot.''

"Your experience points out a significant need for standardized dosing, testing and labeling,'' he told me, recalling a similar vertiginous paranoia spiral when he and his wife split a pot brownie in Amsterdam in 2008.

On Friday, Marijuana.com launched an ongoing guide to "the best practices towards both consumption and sale of edibles.'' It urged every dispensary in Colorado and throughout America to follow Amsterdam's lead and put up signs warning about the dangers of oversampling psychotropic treats. (Other websites, from Vice to Vox, also weighed in with helpful safety tips on edibles.)

Hartfield said Weedmaps is providing pamphlets, posters and video to dispensaries and users, including an "Edibles Education'' pamphlet with headings like "Start Small,'' "Wait'' because edibles take two hours or longer to take effect, "Don't Mix'' with alcohol or other substances, and keep "Out of Reach'' of children.

"Edibles are not the best delivery device in general for marijuana because it's notoriously hard to control the titration in your stomach,'' Hartfield said. "When you smoke it's so easy. You have a hit, it affects you immediately. Then you can decide to take another if you want to get higher. With edibles, it hits your stomach all at once, and holy Nelly!''

Some Colorado pols are nervous about stories like that of the Longmont mother who found her 2-year-old daughter eating a pot cookie in front of their apartment building and the two 10-year-olds in Greeley who were caught selling and swapping pot purloined from relatives. (Not to mention the new British study suggesting there may be a correlation between smoking cannabis and a...