Bad Pot Brownies: A Trend?

When Elk Grove Patch first heard that students at two area high schools had complained of being sick this week after eating marijuana brownies, we weren't overly surprised. Weed can cause nausea, and at least some percentage of high school students has been known to indulge in the herb occasionally.

District spokesperson Elizabeth Graswich said Thursday that the incidents, which happened Wednesday at Florin High School and Thursday at Monterey Trail High School, were troubling but not unprecedented.

"We have students that either arrive to school or are found to be at school under the influence, from time to time," she said. "To have two reports two days in a row of students under the influence as a result of brownies with marijuana is unusual."

No serious illnesses were reported and the Monterey Trail students, who had been vomiting, were transported to the hospital "as a precaution," she said.

But then we learned that a colleague at another Patch site in the San Francisco Bay Area town of Albany had covered this week. Six students in the local middle and high schools had fallen ill after eating what the school district called "particularly potent and dangerous" brownies, and the district was in an uproar.

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post had this story Thursday about a high school in Evanston, IL, where malevolent munchies led to the arrest of at least one teenage baker.

Which made us wonder, are more teens simply choosing to eat their ganja instead of smoke it these days? Or is there something else in the brownies that is making these kids sick?

For an expert opinion, Elk Grove Patch spoke with Jackie Guerra, an employee at 1 Love Wellness Center, a (legal) medical cannabis clinic in Sacramento. Guerra said there are multiple ways the teens could have fallen ill.

"Some people just can't eat edibles because they will upset their stomach," she said. "It doesn't necessarily depend on your body weight. If they made them at home, there could be sanitary issues as well."

Guerra said the brownies could have contained an extra-high dose of the drug, or another harmful ingredient. "THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) gets in your bloodstream and it does certain things," she said. "If you do cut it with something else, just like if you mix alcohol with it, it's going to affect your body and the mixture of the two chemicals could make you pretty sick."

Elk Grove Unified School District police are investigating the two incidents here, Graswich said, but don't have any reason to believe they are connected.

Parents and students, what do you think?