The New York Times' Maureen Dowd told Business Insider she was intent on having a good time before her terrifying experience with a marijuana candy bar.
"I wrote in the column that I take responsibility for not knowing enough about what I was doing," Dowd wrote in an email to Business Insider Thursday. "I was focused more on the fun than the risks. In that sense, I'm probably like many other people descending on Denver."
Dowd's column sounded a cautionary note about Colorado's policy of legal recreational and said it still has some "kinks" that need to be "ironed out" to protect novice stoners such as herself who may be unaware of how much marijuana to consume in one sitting. However, marijuana Colorado cannabis tour guide operator Matt Brown, who helped prepare Dowd for her story, told The Cannabisthe specifically warned her not to eat too much of the drug-filled candy bar. Dowd insisted to Business Insider that she didn't recall that part of the lesson before diving into her marijuana endeavor.
"Matt Brown gave me a great tour. There is no mention of edibles in my transcript of our interview, but we were together several hours and no doubt we did chat about it at some point," she continued. "Obviously, however, I didn't come away with the knowledge I acquired the hard way--that more than a small amount of an edible was ill-advised for someone with a low tolerance level and that edibles are ingested differently and reaction times are quite different. I ate approximately a quarter of the candy bar, which was too much for someone like me."
Despite her traumatic experience, Dowd said she favors marijuana legalization, "but given all the tourists streaming into Colorado, it would be better to err on the side of conservative cautions."
Multiple sources have told Business Insider the New York Times drug tests new employees. In light of this, we asked company spokeswoman Eileen Murphy if Dowd was given any special exemption from the company's drug testing policies.
"I am going to assume this is not a serious question," Murphy replied.
Murphy didn't respond after being told of the question's seriousness.
For her part, Dowd, said she didn't have the paper pay for her pot and she wasn't worried about the Times' drug policy.
"I didn't expense it and I didn't have concerns," she said.
Additional reporting by Hunter Walker.