Medical Marijuana Actually Helps

The background and history of medical marijuana

By Joseph Urrutia

April 23, 2014

        Watching anyone suffer from some type of disease or pain is saddening enough but having to watch your own child suffer is unbearable. That was a problem with many parents that have children suffering from epilepsy. Epilepsy is the disorder where one can have chronic seizures and lose consciousness up to several times a day.  Luckily now many studies and test have been done and there had been lots of cases that prove that medical marijuana does help children with epilepsy. It helps the children by reducing their seizures from many a day to very few. There is a lot of controversy with this topic but that seems to be the use with anything dealing with marijuana in today’s world.

Some argue that marijuana is a gateway drug and will just cause the children to want to do more drugs as they grow up, but since the oil does not give them the high feeling there is no way it could be a gateway drug for them, it is clearly just helping their disorder. The ways that marijuana is used are more of the issue. Yeah it seems to be all over with all age groups getting high but the controversy of it being so bad needs to end already. Here it is actually helping children and developing a better life for them but here we still have the issue of it is a drug and is bad. Just because it is used recreationally and happens to get a lot of people in trouble is why people say it is bad but all they need to look at and what society needs to do is show how it actually helps people. Society needs to stop advertising all the bad that marijuana is and start advertising all the good that marijuana actually does.

Marijuana has been around for so long and helping all kinds of different illnesses. Time magazine tells about this issue, “As early as 2737 B.C., the mystical Emperor Shen Neng of China was prescribing marijuana tea for the treatment of gout, rheumatism, malaria and, oddly enough, poor memory.” Irish doctor William O'Shaughnessy was the first to introduce medical marijuana to America. Since then right now there are thirteen states that have a law where medical marijuana is legal. Now with the popularity in medical marijuana going up because of the ways that it is helping epileptic children many states are working on hopefully soon legalizing medical marijuana.

Gladly the state of Utah is looking over all the negative values said about marijuana and are seeing that it does really help people with their diseases. The state is working to pass a law to let parents have the marijuana extract to help with their epileptic children seizures.  “The new law doesn't allow medical marijuana production in Utah but allows families meeting certain restrictions to obtain the extract from other states.” Even though Utah will not be legalizing marijuana in the state, people with the approval of a doctor will be able to enter the state with the medicinal marijuana and use it in the privacy of their homes. Utah parents, with children that have epilepsy, are so happy because they will not have to see their children suffer anymore with their constant seizures.

Another one of the major states that is battling to hopefully help the children that are suffering from epilepsy in their state is the state of Illinois. Elise Dismer wrote an article in the Chicago Sun-Times writing about how the state wants to help the children and since medical marijuana is the best way to help the children then that is what they will have to do. One issue in that state is the recreational use of marijuana and there is too much trouble going around with recreational use so will medical use cause the same problems. Illinois is working on adding minors with epilepsy to the law list of disorders to use medical marijuana. With that they are hoping for the use of recreational marijuana will be the least of the state officers worries because the jails are getting to packed so they need to focus more on the crime not the drug usage in the state. The senate is using people stories about their children with epilepsy and how it can slow down their children’s seizures that can occur up to hundreds to a thousand times a day.  They hope that these stories and other facts they have put together will help them pass the law

Once children with epilepsy grow older and still have the chronic seizures it can make things a lot harder for them like maintaining relationships, driving, and how other people look them upon. So why not try to help cure these seizures when they children are young so that when they grow older they do not suffer from the chronic seizures and are able to live an actual normal life. The children and the scientist will both benefit form this issue with not only the children making progress in whatever they were behind in because of their seizures, and the scientist making progress on finding different ways to help cure epilepsy. Of coarse the progress of personal controls of the children’s body is much more important. Giving the children with epilepsy the cannabis oil does not give them the feeling of being high it just calmly slows the brain down so the brain will not be so constant with the seizures.

A five-year-old named Charlotte became the poster child for the cannabis oil extract and was named Charlotte’s Web after their five year old. The extract treats cancer and seizures for children and adults. The extract does not produce so much THC so when it is given to the patient they do not get the real feeling of being high as if you were to actually smoke marijuana. “A person taking CBD gets the medicinal effects of cannabis without the intoxication, some doctor’s claim. The medication is extracted from the marijuana plant using rotary evaporator, mixed with olive oil, then ingested,” claims Jason Henry.

The Charlottes Web story grew fast and it had parents that had children with epilepsy wanting Charlotte’s web for their children. Once they heard that Charlotte would have up to a hundred seizures a day and by taking the extract it narrowed her seizures down to two or three a month, it had people wanting to move states just so their children could get the chance to love a normal life without any seizures. Especially when the second story about the Charlotte’s Web came out about a mother telling how after using it her son is now learning. He never knew how to ride a bike or his colors and with this he started riding a bike learning how to spell and to speak in complete sentences. Charlotte’s Web has so many people wanting it. There is a record of 2,000 people on a waitlist for Charlotte’s Web.

Hopefully medical marijuana will soon get all the recognition that it deserves for all the good things that it actually does. Maybe soon everyone will stop looking at it as a gateway and recreational drug and will soon look at it as a medicine to cure many different illnesses.

Stack, Patrick. “A Brief History of Medical Marijuana.” New York. Times. October 09, 2009. Web. April 27, 2014.

Dismer, Elise. “Legislation to let kids with epilepsy use pot advances.” Chicago Sun Times, March 25, 2014, Web. 26 March 2014.

Price, Michelle L. “Utah to welcome marijuana for limited medical use.” Colorado. News Banks. March 26. Web.

“Ill. Senate panel passes medical cannabis proposal.” Illinois. News Bank. March 26. Web.