November 24, 2009 – I’ve written about medical marijuana so often in the last couple years my mother must think I’m sitting around stoned out of my gourd half the time. The fact is, I don’t even like the stuff. Then again, I don’t much like the smell of Tiger Balm on my own skin but the benefits are well worth the odor when arthritis hits.

I’m a firm believer in old wives’ tales and various schools of holistic medicine. I believe that too many of our children are over medicated with synthetic drugs in order to keep them tractable or comforted. I’m also not one bit shocked that a family in Southern California is having great success with their troubled and autistic child due to the use of medical marijuana.

Recently, their autistic child was on 13 types of medication. He was acting out violently and literally starving himself to death due to a complete lack of appetite. Today, the child is on 3 types of medication, one to be used only as needed, and another that he’s being weaned off of. He’s beginning to show signs of actual verbal communication. The little boy is calm and sociable. He’s also put on a few pounds and is eating like a healthy child again. How is this possible? Through the consumption of a single pot brownie approximately the size of a quarter, administered once every three or four days. The child’s parents are surprised and thrilled.

A large portion of the medical community is not exactly standing behind the family or the family’s doctor who prescribed the medical marijuana. The arguments against it are primarily that there are concerns about giving marijuana to a child and that it hasn’t been tested for results regarding autism. Rather than ask why this mother is feeding her kid a fraction of a pot brownie instead of 13 ineffective pills a day, they ought to look at the results in the case and ask themselves why the heck they aren’t out there testing this today.

The parents have had to listen to comments such as, “Oh, you’re just getting your kid stoned so you don’t have to put up with him.” Right. A quarter-sized brownie wouldn’t keep a chipmunk stoned for three days. This is the reaction of a childless nitwit. When your own child goes through an ordeal and faces a very real possibility of death, you’ll do anything to help your child. Petty criticism doesn’t make a dent in a mom’s determination to save her baby, no matter how old that baby may be. A dad will knock down a gauntlet of pooh-poohers if they stand in the way of his child’s salvation. If my kid was dying and the only option I hadn’t yet pursued was a big old opium pipe, I’d light one up for him. When parents are afraid for their children, they will grasp at any straw. What a blessing when one of the straws actually works.

The Mayo Clinic has done research on the beneficial effects of medical marijuana on chemo patients. The results were overwhelmingly positive. Prior to the research, it was “privately tested.” The results were so good that it caught the attention of credible research groups. Here we have a case that merits exploration, and the torch bearers and pitchfork wavers are ready to camp on some poor mother’s doorstep rather than say, “Wow, this could help a lot of kids!” By Lily Robertson. Source.

November 17, 2009 – ‘Sam’ is a 10 year-old California boy who lives with his Dad, Mom, and sister Lucy. Sam has autism. From age two until eight, Sam’s disorder made him violent and aggressive. His parents Steve and Angela were truly living a nightmare, every day.

“He got to the point where he was hurting other children, when he was in school, or in public places,” Angela explains to KTLA News. “We’d be in line at the store, and he’d just bolt and hit another child in the face without any warning at all.”

Sam’s Dad remembers all the tough days. “One time he pulled down a TV, he knocked over furniture. I had to put him in a hold for a whole hour. His body was just spasming, so I lay there just crying, and holding him.”

Sam’s parents worked with expert doctors, who recommended a succession of conventional prescription medications — like Risperdal and a host of others. But Sam just gained 20 pounds, and he became even more dangerous.

“His behavior was getting worse,” Angela recalls. “And we were scared. He was getting bigger, stronger, now that he was 20 pounds heavier from the Risperdal.”

“It was the saddest thing,” Steve says. “The child we’d grown to love was gone. When you talked to him, looked at him, he’d just disappeared.”

Finally, at their wit’s end, and faced with the very real prospect of needing to institutionalize their son, Sam’s parents decided to try something unconventional…and controversial. Last year they began treating Sam with medical marijuana.

“If you think about it, it’s the perfect drug for that kind of behavior, very calming,” Angela says.

Steve and Angela got a recommendation from a medical cannabis doctor. They told Sam’s pediatrician about their plan. And Steve grew Sam’s new medicine in their back yard. From the marijuana flowers Steve grew, he could make a concentrated form, what people refer to as ‘hash.’

Steve showed us a ball of hash, roughly ¾ inch in diameter, representing roughly four months of doses for Sam. Steve softens the cannabis with heat, then takes what appears to be just a speck of pot — Sam’s ‘dose’ for the day.

And from the very start, the cannabis was a godsend for Sam’s family. “The first time we did it, we wanted to see if it would work at all,” Steve recalls. “It was an amazing experience, I’ll never forget it, as we watched what happened, it was like ‘He’s back!’ It was like all this anguish, pent-up rage and aggressiveness went away — it just calmed him down.”

While KTLA visited the family, we watched Steve put Sam’s daily dose in a piece of melon and take it to him. Within roughly 20 minutes, the effects were clear. Where earlier Sam had been animated and antsy, after eating his speck of hash Sam became calm, relaxed, and social.

Could Sam’s story help others? Respected Los Angeles-area pediatrician Chris Tolcher says we don’t know enough about cannabis for kids.

“I think for all the parents out there whose children may have autism,” Tolcher says, “I think the message here is that this is intriguing information that needs more research before we can confidently say that marijuana is a safe and effective treatment for autism complications.”

But for one California family, medical marijuana has literally been an answer to their prayers and a homecoming for their son. “It was a medication with the result we’d been hoping for, for so long,” Steve says.

Angela agrees. “He was happy again, smiling, laughing. There was the boy we’d lost for so long, who we wondered if we’d ever see again.

“It just feels like I have more control to help my son,” Steve says. “We don’t depend on doctors, who may have the best intentions, but they don’t know what Sam needs.. I want do what’s best for my son. And I’ll do whatever I can for him.” Source.