How a 12-Year-Old Girl Could Help End Weed Prohibition in America

[Weekend Warrior]

Twelve-year-old Alexis Bortell uses a cannabis oil called Haleigh's Hope to prevent life-threatening epileptic seizures. She takes the oil orally by syringe twice a day, and always keeps a THC spray on hand in case she experiences an aura, or pre-seizure event. The auras happen maybe once every three to four weeks – far less often now that she moved to Colorado than when she lived in Texas. When doctors in Texas were left with no other option than to suggest an experimental lobotomy, her parents moved to Colorado. Cannabis had to be better than removing a portion of Bortell's brain.

"I'm now over two years seizure-free because of my cannabis medicine. In Texas, our goal was three days, [and] that's the max I ever got," says Bortell, who's now in the sixth grade. "It's helped me succeed in school more, since I don't have to go to the nurse every day because of auras and seizures. There was no medicine in Texas that would stop my seizures, and not only that, but they had horrendous side effects that would be worse than the actual seizure."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/how-a-12-year-old-girl-could-help-end-weed-prohibition-in-america/ar-AAtgQEr?li=BBnbfcL

[BigmanPigman]

1. When I called to have my cable fixed last year the repairman told me

that he moved his entire family across the country to CA so that his 2 1/2 year old daughter would be able to get medical cannabis. He works like mad, lives with his family in a trailer park and encourages everyone else in a similar situation to do the same. His daughter's seizure have gone from over 200 a week to only a few a day. If that isn't a great argument for legalization, I don't know what is.

[Louis1895]

3. Need more research

We need more solid scientific research on what compounds in the oil are most effective for various ailments. Unfortunately, the National Institutes of Health is constrained on what can be done due to the classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug.

[tblue37]

5. Weed and weed byproducts could help a LOT of chronic pain patients, and

unlike opioids, weed isn't addictive and people don't OD and die from it.

I am a chronic pain patient. I wish I lived somewhere where it is legal.

[Nevernose]

6. FWIW, its not a miracle opioid replacement

Some specific pains it seems to intensify for some people.

And for others, like me, it does NOTHING to touch the nerve damage in my paralyzed (yet still feeling) limb. An incredibly tiny dose of codeine and Tylenol, though, is enough to kill the pain when it’s at its worst. I have some European codeine/paracremol squirreled away that I take maybe once a week. The UK stuff isn’t even Tylenol One; it’s .08 mg of codeine a tablet. Literally nothing else can kill the nerve pain.

For comparison’s sake, a recreational dose of codeine for a smallish person — which I am not — starts at about 250-300 mg, the acetaminophen alone enough to kill you. God help you if you ask an American doctor for that, though. They’re so brainwashed they think it will make you an instant junky.

Meanwhile, my pharmacist says that if I DID manage to get that prescribed, he’d have to special order it.

Between the Puritanical disease-is-a-moral-failing thing this country has and the let’s-make-drugs-illegal-because-LITERALLY-BROWN-PEOPLE, this country has some fucked up laws and attitudes. Because of our influence we’ve managed to fuck up most of the rest of the world why we were at it.

[tblue37]

7. I know from past experience that it works for me. And although some people

wouldn't be helped by it, many would, and it should be available for those who would benefit from it.

[Ilsa]

2. kick & rec. nt

[forgotmylogin]

4. My neighbor has oral cancer.

I'm not sure of the exact name of it, but she had a tumor at the back of her tongue, went through the treatments and defeated it through the ordeal of chemotherapy and radiation.

Several decades later, it's happening to her again. She decided not to have conventional cancer treatment, instead deciding to try THC despite never wanting to get high or ever having tried it in her life.

She hated smoking it. Hated the feelings it gave her.

She tried the CBD (?) tinctures and has started distilling her own actual cannabis tincture that she doses herself with several times a day. She stated she could feel the tumor in the back of her mouth shrinking.

She went in so they could do the biopsy on it, and the doctors could not find anything to biopsy. She goes back in several months to get checked again to see if they can do the biopsy, but as of now, it's in remission without grueling conventional cancer treatment.