Why not just make it all legal?
"Children with epilepsy waiting for medical marijuana; Could be an answer for affliction, but it’s not here yet" by Kay Lazar | Globe Staff, January 26, 2014
Seventeen medications during the past four years have failed to quell the haywire electrical signals in Haley Osborn’s brain that send her young body into convulsions dozens of times a day.
The 7-year-old climbs into bed at night with her service dog, Sofie, a border collie mix trained to push an alarm with her nose when the seizures start, summoning Haley’s parents. The dog then gently lays her body over Haley to protect her from hurting herself.
Now Jill and Arthur Osborn of Georgetown would dearly love to have their daughter try marijuana, after hearing that it helped children in Colorado with severe, unrelenting seizures. But more than a year after voters approved legalizing marijuana for medical use in Massachusetts, Haley and hundreds of other children with severe epilepsy are still waiting to get the drug.
THAT is CRIMINAL!
Dispensaries authorized to sell marijuana are not expected to open until this summer at the earliest; the state is expected to award the first 35 licenses this week, but it will take months more for the chosen companies to grow their products and negotiate with local authorities for building and other permits.
Related: Marijuana program chief named
Even then, there is no guarantee the stores will stock the strain of marijuana believed to help prevent seizures, and federal law prohibits families from having the drug shipped to their homes from other states where it is legally sold.
“We are desperate to help our daughter, and running into obstacles at every turn,” said Jill Osborn. In the interim, Haley wears a padded helmet to protect her head during seizures, and attends school only part-time, with a nurse at her side.
In November, when Haley was hospitalized for an uncontrollable seizure, and physicians considered putting her into a medically-induced coma for the second time in her short life, the Osborns thought about packing up and moving to Colorado to get marijuana specially grown for people with epilepsy.
You do not always come out of them, you know?
“We don’t think we should have to uproot our medically fragile child and our whole support team to go there,” Jill Osborn said. “We shouldn’t be limited because of geography.”
How come "liberal" Massachusetts is only first on gay marriage?
Marijuana is promoted as a treatment for a long list of ailments, though few rigorous studies have been done to show it works.
Because those studies have been blocked by government.
For children with epilepsy, however, the evidence of marijuana’s benefits is slowly accumulating….
Actually, they always has been evidence. It is only authority that is finally recognizing it.
Related: Millie and Maggie You Gotta Move
Unlike THC, the ingredient that causes marijuana’s high,” CBD is nonpsychoactive, and it has captured widespread attention amid anecdotal reports that it has helped tame seizures in children in Colorado and California.
Many of the medications available for children with epilepsy have severe side effects that can impair their development, memory, behavior, and mood, so parents have become desperate to get marijuana for their children….
The Osborn kid is hoping to get lucky in a lottery at Mass. General.
As I have been saying since the beginning, how many people must needlessly suffer as the state drags its feet because we voted for something they did not like?
For the many children who will not be selected for the study, another challenge will be getting physicians to sign a form certifying them to legally purchase marijuana for medical use. State law requires one physician certification for adults, and two for children.
Haley’s mother has secured one signature from her daughter’s longtime pediatrician, but the Mass. General specialists who treat Haley have hesitated, in part because their hospital has not yet developed a policy on the issue, said Dr. Elizabeth Thiele, director of Mass. General’s pediatric epilepsy program.
“The problem in signing the forms is, we won’t necessarily know what our patients will be getting,” she said, noting that there is “significant variability” among medical marijuana preparations.
Meanwhile, the kids continue to suffer.
Massachusetts’ medical marijuana rules are considered more stringent than many other states’, requiring dispensaries to have an independent lab test their products for contaminants such as pesticides and mold, and for potency, but there is no mandate that store personnel have the expertise to match a patient’s specific illness with the strain of marijuana most likely to be of benefit.
We suck!
When dispensary doors finally open, it is not clear how many will sell marijuana rich in CBD. Andrew DeAngelo, director of operations at Harborside Health Center, a large California marijuana dispensary that carries CBD-rich products, said he is unlikely to initially grow such strains in Massachusetts if he wins one of the coveted dispensary licenses. He hopes to open in Suffolk County….
He said cancer patients, for instance, typically benefit from strains with higher concentrations of THC.
But at least one dispensary applicant said he is committed to growing marijuana that might help Haley and other children with seizures.
“We are not worried about the small, added cost to growing strains that are not in high demand,” said Brandon Tarricone, chief executive of Medicinal Evolution, which intends to open in Essex County, if granted a license….
Looks like two people have the in$ide track on them; otherwise, I wouldn't see them in my Globe.
Leave it to the $toners to not be worried about profit margins, 'eh?
--more--"
Also see: No science for Obama’s recent pot claim
What, that it is the greatest story never told, that it can cure cancer?
I can $ee why certain indu$tries would not want that.
Obama First Science Officer
What has he been smoking?
3 convicted for marijuana operation
A federal jury for a sophisticated outdoor operation in the woods?
Obama Administration Goes to Pot
So that is the stink I'm smelling.
I better watch my language before I'm labeled a psycho by my propaganda pre$$.
NEXT DAY UPDATE: Mass. puts the ‘medical’ in marijuana
And takes the fun out of smoking pot!
Only in Ma$$achu$hitts!
