Don’t let this fatal cannabis error ruin the holidays

Cheerful guests at dinner table listening to friend and drinking wine

Those of us who take a cousins’ walk each holiday dinner may have wished that one extra curmudgeonly family member would join in. We wonder if maybe a hit of fire weed would calm them down. Perhaps a dash of THC seltzer in their drink would make them understand a different point of view. That might be true, but likely only if they know they are being dosed.

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A story pops up every few months about someone giving a group of people cannabis food without them knowing. Let us agree once and for all: weed is only fun with consent. This article should be able to end here, period. But for the sake of nailing my point to the ground, let’s spell it out.

Being in a good headspace for the cannabis experience makes it exponentially better for me personally. Not only could mindfully consuming make a high better, but the opposite may be true, too. Feeling the effects of weed, especially edibles, without knowing what is happening could be terrifying. A person may think that they are having a stroke or get worked up enough to experience an actual anxiety attack because of the effects.

Any ground you had about getting a person to try weed would be gone after dosing someone without their consent. Aside from being ethically wrong, it is cruel. Giving someone weed without them knowing, even with positive intentions, could have detrimental effects. The mental experience alone may be difficult, but there is also the issue of combining weed with other prescriptions.

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Sedatives, antipsychotics, antidepressants, and other prescriptions might interact with pot once it hits the system. In some cases, this means cannabis might stop the prescriptions from working or make its impact far more intense. People rarely know each others’ precise pharmaceutical regimen, which means one should never dose another with weed.

Whatever way you slice it, giving someone cannabis without them knowing is just not chill. They could feel anxious and stressed or end up having serious side effects while the cannabinoids kick in. Imagine it all you want, but this holiday season, make sure everyone opts in for THC.

Cara Wietstock is senior content producer of GreenState.com and has been working in the cannabis space since 2011. She has covered the cannabis business beat for Ganjapreneur and The Spokesman Review. You can find her living in Bellingham, Washington with her husband, son, and a small zoo of pets.