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.