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Got the munchies?
By: Nicholas Kohler, National Post (Canada), 03-21-05

To the marijuana grow-op underground that police say is dominated by gangs, guns and booby traps, she brings baking trays, butter and chocolate chips.

And if "Joey" is the only name she'll provide the National Post, it's because this cannabis cookie-maker knows sprinkling her not-so-secret baking ingredient into the mix is a crime.

Still, Joey, a 34-year-old Toronto woman who discovered cooking with cannabis a decade ago, represents something of the flip side of the grow-op phenomenon, highlighted so grotesquely this month by the massacre of four RCMP officers at James Roszko's Alberta farm, where police uncovered 20 ppt plants.

While in the wake of those slayings police described grow-ops as rife with firearms and violent gangs, Joey, who doesn't grow herself but gathers her main ingredient from half a dozen Toronto operations, says there are different kinds of grow-ops. Yes, some are gang-driven, grown in mass quantities for the U.S. market. But then there are the hobby farmers, who can be compared more to home brewers. Except it's illegal.

She says she's never seen a gun or an operation with more than 20 plants.

"I think stealth is your best precaution," she says.

And while police say grow-ops are the money engines of organized crime, Joey distributes most of her illicit cookies to "compassion centres," illegal clubs where membership hinges on a doctor's note and pot is used not to intoxicate but to ease chronic pain and quiet muscle spasms.

"I've been a good girl and I've only sold to people who've got their doctor' s notes," says Joey, a diminutive woman who keeps her hair in pigtails. "I'm a good girl, and my lawyer's happy."

Joey can bake upward of a couple of thousand cookies a month, both the high-powered, cannabis variety and the benign hemp treats she sells to the able-bodied at festivals.

It's a home business she says makes her just enough money to pay her rent and groceries; this year, she'll even start paying taxes on her cookie income.

At the compassion clubs, the locations of which are kept secret, Joey's cookies sell for about $15 for a package of three.

The effects of her cookies, which come in flavours such as rainbow sprinkle, chocolate chip and peanut butter, can last as long as eight hours and allow users to enjoy what they see as the benefits of the drug without smoking.

"It's food, it's organic and it's home-cooked," says one of Joey's best customers, Kevin, who eats about 14 cookies a week to treat his chronic pain and says he has a doctor's note to prove it.

"It's like grandma made it," Kevin, 41, says.

As innocent as it sounds, however, Joseph Neuberger, a Toronto criminal lawyer familiar with Joey, says the business is illegal -- even if unearthing the cookies probably would not allow police to charge her.

"I don't think those cookies test very well," he said. "So, in fact, they may be legal."

In a similar B.C. case, Mary Jean Dunsdon, the nudist baker of cannabis-laced gingersnaps better known as "Watermelon," beat marijuana-related charges three times in court, with a final charge dropped this month.

Joey's greatest fear, then, isn't being caught -- "I used to be a lot more paranoid than I am now," she says -- it's being "typecast" as a gang member or a character out of the well-known propaganda film Reefer Madness.

"I want to present a character profile and say, 'Look, this is who we are: We're mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. We're doctors, lawyers. We're everybody."

THE RECIPE:

This is how Joey makes her cannabis butter, which replaces ordinary butter in traditional cookie recipes:

- 1 lb unsalted butter

- dried cannabis ground up with a coffee grinder (the amount used depends on the marijuana's potency and which part of the plant is used: for mild, smokeable bud, use 14 to 28 grams)

- 4 to 5 litres of water

- 1 stock pot

- a large bowl

- a colander

- cheesecloth

- one large spoon and one potato masher

1. Put all the ingredients in the stock pot and place on very low heat.

2. Simmer the mixture for six to eight hours, stirring every 30 minutes or so.

3. Next, place the cheesecloth-lined colander over the large bowl and slowly pour the mixture through.

4. Tightly wrap the mixture in the cheesecloth and squeeze out all the liquid. Use the potato masher to squeeze the juice from between the leaves.

5. Throw out the contents of the cheesecloth and refrigerate the liquid in the pot. The "butter" and water in the bowl will soon separate, with all the THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) now in the butter. Store the butter in the fridge or freeze it if you don't plan to use it within a week.