Jim Stingl In My Opinion SHARE Poll Should marijuana be legalized for medical use? Yes No vote View Results Yes: 86% No: 14% Total Responses: 3033 Stingl Videos Periodically, columnist Jim Stingl hits the streets of Milwaukee. To see his latest video columns, click the thumbnails below. Loading...

Rest easy, Milwaukee, knowing that Montel Williams' pot pipe has been taken away.

We're sending a clear message that we're not going to tolerate the former talk show host's use of marijuana to ease the chronic pain of multiple sclerosis. No sir. Not in our city, punk. Rub some dirt on it.

The celebrity didn't have any actual evil weed, you understand, but the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department lightened his wallet by $484 just for the empty pipe in his bag at a security checkpoint at Mitchell International Airport this week. The contraband was very much like the pipes you can buy in shops all over town.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Williams told me it was a wooden pipe that he had forgotten to remove from the travel bag. It was spotted by the screener, and Williams wound up being detained at the sheriff's airport substation for an hour, though he did not miss his plane. The pipe tested negative for marijuana residue. He did not have to pose for a mug shot or leave fingerprints.

Williams doesn't call it a pot pipe. "It's an instrument I utilize to take my medication," he said. That medication is marijuana.

"There were four police officers involved in this entire situation. It's very interesting that a wooden pipe that tested negatively took away the actions of four security officers that were there to protect and serve the country against the potential of terrorist attacks, bombs and other things," he said.

It turns out Williams had come to Wisconsin in search of healing, and the drug paraphernalia ticket was a crummy parting gift.

Since September, he has been participating in experimental treatment at the University of Wisconsin medical school in Madison. The research involves stimulating the tongue with electrical impulses that then flow into the brain stem and enable the brain to more effectively process information in patients with MS, stroke, brain injury or Parkinson's disease.

Williams found out about it when a fellow air traveler called his attention to an in-flight magazine article about UW's Tactile Communication and Neurorehabilitation Lab.

"I'm all in on this," he says excitedly in an online video about the lab. At one point, he breaks down when talking about the possibility of easing the pain in his feet and legs and improving his gait and balance.

Williams, 54, who hosted a TV talk show from 1991 to 2008, was diagnosed with MS in 1999. He founded the nonprofit Montel Williams MS Foundation.

The UW lab is trying to keep a lower profile until more test results can be gathered and published, medical school spokeswoman Susan Lampert Smith said. After Williams talked about it on Oprah Winfrey's show, the lab was overwhelmed by requests from people who wanted the treatment. No new patients are being accepted at this time.

Williams was in Wisconsin this week for a follow-up visit to the lab, and he was returning home to New York on Tuesday when he got busted. He said he'll be returning here to the lab once a month for the next six months.

He told CNN he uses marijuana every day and expects that will continue the rest of his life. "I don't get the same euphoria that other people do. I get neuropathic pain lessening, and that's why I use it," he said.

He's become an outspoken advocate for legalizing the drug for medicinal use, and said he's a "card-carrying" user in two of the states where it's been approved. Wisconsin has talked about joining those more enlightened states but so far hasn't. Neither has his state of New York.

For now, we're the place that nails sick people at the airport for carrying their medicine dispensers. Williams was not critical of the screeners or the deputies and said they were doing their jobs. He said he deserves no special treatment.

This happened to him once before at the airport in Detroit in 2003. He was ticketed for having a marijuana pipe, but the case later was thrown out in court, he said. Without detailing his defense, he said he plans to send some paperwork about his medicinal use to the court in Milwaukee. His court date is Feb. 2.

Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or e-mail at jstingl@journalsentinel.com