Pubdate: Thu, 20 May 2010
Source: Wisconsin State Journal (WI)
Copyright: 2010 Madison Newspapers, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.madison.com/wsj/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/506
Author: Chris Rickert

FOOTNOTE: A MARIJUANA-LACED COOKIE?

Q. Last week, three Verona seventh-graders were disciplined by school 
officials after one sold what the student said was a marijuana-laced 
cookie to two other students, who ate it. Why put marijuana in a cookie?

A. Excepting the obvious answer, there seems little reason to put 
anything green - other than M&Ms or sprinkles - in a cookie, 
especially if it's marijuana, which is most commonly smoked.

But Gary Storck, a medical marijuana advocate and co-founder of the 
Madison chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of 
Marijuana Laws, or NORML, said that when marijuana is eaten it 
provides a fuller-bodied, longer sensation that can relieve 
spasticity or severe pain.

Cooking marijuana, typically by sauteing it in butter or oil, 
releases chemical compounds in the plant such as THC, Storck said.

Products made with the sauteed marijuana, or just the butter or oil 
the marijuana was sauteed in, aren't necessarily ruined, flavor-wise, 
he said, although you're probably going to taste raw or dried 
marijuana that's simply tossed in with the Tollhouse batter.

Because it has to travel through the digestive system, marijuana that 
is eaten can take several hours to take effect, Storck said, whereas 
the effect of smoked marijuana is almost immediate.

Eating it is also less efficient, he said. "You need a lot less to 
get off by inhaling it."

And it can make you sick to the stomach - either from the plant 
itself or too much of its intoxicating chemicals, he said.

Dane County Sheriff's Sgt. Gordy Disch, of the Dane County Narcotics 
and Gang Task Force, said his unit rarely comes into contact with 
marijuana-laced foods.

"To me it's just bizarre that anyone would use marijuana to cook," he 
said, although he acknowledges that some might say the same thing 
about cooking with alcohol.

The State Journal's Footnote tries to explain the often heard, but 
perhaps not widely understood, phrases, ideas and controversies in the news.
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