Marijuana for kids?
A heart broken mother, speaking about medical marijuana…
“I didn’t try to give it to her again,” Maxim recalls. “The only thing that I look back and say I wish I’d done something different is I wish I started medical marijuana sooner, I wish I continued it, I wish I wasn’t so scared.” [Read Hailey’s story by Valerie Vande Panne]
What right does anyone have to tell us what we can and cannot put into our bodies? I can’t even imagine how this mother feels, watching her child die. How can you look into that little face and not be moved?
WHEN SHANNON MAXIM was struggling to help her daughter through leukemia, medical marijuana was still illegal in Massachusetts. On November 6, 2012, 63 percent of Massachusetts voters approved the use of marijuana to treat conditions in circumstances where a doctor thinks the benefits outweigh the risk. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia recognize medical marijuana, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and all but two of those jurisdictions permit its use in children. The federal government still considers marijuana a banned drug and has targeted medical marijuana clinics and dispensaries, primarily in Western states, for prosecution.
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“I’ve been studying marijuana since 1967,” says Grinspoon. “I started to study it because I was so concerned about all of these young people who used marijuana, that they were harming themselves. I believed all the things everybody was told about it. My best friend at that time was Carl Sagan, and I would tell him not to smoke it, and he would say, ‘Oh, Lester, it’s harmless.’ ”
Grinspoon changed his mind after his own teenage son used marijuana when he was undergoing treatment for lymphocyte leukemia in 1971; the boy, Danny, died of the cancer in 1973. Danny found that medical marijuana eased his suffering from chemotherapy. That inspired Grinspoon to learn more. “I went to the Harvard library and started reading,” he says. “It fascinates me: one, the properties of the drug itself, and two, that I and so many others had been so misled about it.”
Trying to contact your legislator is a nightmare. You get that same party line: it’s a gateway drug, it kills brain cells. You know the routine. It’s all been proven false, but hey, these are politicians who can’t just let the facts get in the way.
Heck, I’ve even contacted California congressman Tom McClintock and received the very same spiel from him. I tried educating him on the subject. I tried to impress upon him how important it was that he pass legislation to end the drug war.
Hopefully, you know that the state of California can, if it wants, nullify the Federal law. Why it hasn’t, I don’t know. Nullification is the last great hope of liberty in America, and all the states have the power to nullify any federal law they don’t like…well almost any law. The point is, California should have protected all the dispensaries, and they just sat there and did nothing. Only a small handful of districts have done anything to preserve the voter-approved Prop 215.
Some doctors argue that there may be “special dangers” for young people using medical marijuana.
Like what? The alternative is that they will die. That’s happening all too needlessly anyways! None of us are going to live forever, but for a child to die needlessly — shame on us.
Please share this. This child was killed by the medical community. They murdered her as sure as I’m sitting here typing this. Someone should be held accountable… but who? The courts, the judges, the police, the legislature?
It’s got to stop. People have a right to be healthy. Medical marijuana for anyone in need is the right thing to do.
Marijuana for kids? Hell, yes!
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