New US Health Tourists: Parents Desperate for Legal Cannabis for Their Suffering Kids

[Tsiyu]

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/09/medical-marijuana-families-move-to-colorado-epilepsy

Tristan Forde used to experience as many as 20 seizures a day. The two-year-old has Dravet Syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy, and was forced to constantly wear a helmet – suffering seizures so frequently that his three-year-old brother would automatically go to the freezer and get an ice pack every time Forde had an attack.

Everything changed, however, when Forde began medical cannabis treatment last year. He went months without suffering a single seizure, said Yvonne Cahalane, Forde’s mother. “For the first time, it looked like there was a sparkle in his eyes. It sounds corny, but he just looked so much brighter.”

But Forde’s hardships are far from over. He and his mother had to travel more than 4,000 miles from their hometown of Dunmanway, Ireland, to Aurora, Colorado, to legally access cannabis from a professional doctor. When their visas expire at the end of the year, they’ll have to return to Ireland where the medicine that Cahalane says has changed her son’s life is considered an illegal drug.

Forde and his mother are part of a small group of expats, also known as “international medical marijuana refugees”, who have in recent years turned their lives upside down and moved from overseas to Colorado for cannabis-based medicines that they say carry profound health effects.

Meanwhile, Trump has chosen Chris Christie to be on his transition team....a guy who HATES cannabis. That will go over well.

And by the way: ANY of you, whether you are politicians, DEA policy makers and enforcers, district attorneys, for-profit prison companies, hospital and medical authorities or just plain old idiot citizens: If your greed and addiction to authoritarian bullshit and fear-mongering is causing even ONE child to not receive the CBD or other cannabis they need YOU are a complete waste of a human being and you are EVIL.

You don't deserve to live among humane, reasonable people, in my opinion, and if it were up to me I would have every enemy of cannabis locked away for the good of society. Hate me if you like, but the fear-mongering and paranoia and life-ruining effects of its prohibition have gone TOO FAR.

Anyone involved in denying a child life-saving medicine of ANY sort is a piece of human filth. I hope that any of you who meet this criteria either open your minds or you suffer a thousand times what those children suffer.

Oh, and fuck you, too. I'm talking to you, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and any other "Democrat" who gets campaign donations and power while denying babies a lifesaving PLANT.

To those who are fighting against uneducated imbeciles and greedy drug warriors, and to all brave parents everywhere, I salute you.

[TrappedInUtah]

1. Such is life in Utard

Utah has a lot of this going on. Our government refuses to implement any kind of MMJ program despite our state leading the nation in opiate related issues.

[Tsiyu]

2. They implemented one here

in Tennessee, if you can call it that. For only a few very specific ailments.


It's still illegal to buy it, though.

Life will be better when the idiots in my generation and older die off. Truly.

Although I talked to a woman the other day in her thirties -- the kind that goes to church to be screamed at by old men with bulging eyeballs declaring the rapture every fifteen seconds -- who seems absolutely PETRIFIED to even discuss cannabis. It would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.

I said: "It's a plant, for heaven's sake. It's not the Debbul, and it's not going to jump out of the pot and attack you!" She did laugh at that.

I'm sure she would do whatever she could to save her own child's life, cannabis or not. But then maybe a lot of parents would rather see their children suffer so the parent can continue to live in fear and ignorance -- sacrificing their child to make the authority figures and their preachers happy?

I'm never surprised at the way humans will agree to anything --even the suffering of little kids--just so they feel like they "look correct" and fit in. They WANT to be monkeys.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. "Evil motherfuckers" to quote Mickey Leland.

Molly Ivins tells the story of when Mickey Leland was in the Texas State Legislature and they were trying to pass a bill giving senior citizens reduced prices on their drugs. They could not get the bill passed. He couldn't believe that anybody would be evil enough to want to make lots of money on grandma's drugs. So he went over to a group of drug company lobbyists on the Senate floor, and called them "Evil motherfuckers". They just about shit their pants, according to Molly.

Mickey Leland was a pharmacist graduate of Texas Southern University.

[Tsiyu]

4. Mickey had it right

You gotta be sick in the head and heart to justify causing another person's suffering for your own profit.

Sick, twisted and motherfucking evil.

You know, we lock parents up for denying their kids medicine. We need to lock up lawmakers and the DEA for the same damn crime.

Adults can fight back.

Little kids need us to fight for them, but so many my age are "Father Knows Best and Be a Good Girl" fucking cowards.