Parents sue Arizona for right to use medical marijuana that relieved child's seizures and autism symptoms

Sunday, November 10, 2013 by: PF Louis
Tags: medical marijuana, child''s seizures, autism symptoms

(NaturalNews) Protecting your children from harsh medical treatments, such as chemotherapy, and having them healed with alternative means is often considered child abuse by Child Protective Services and the Medical Mafia. Even in a state that now allows medical marijuana use, if your child is being healed with cannabis, the state can threaten parents with arrest.

With such a looming threat hanging over their heads, a couple in Arizona, Jacob and Jennifer Welton, have sued Gov. Jan Brewer, Maricopa County Attorney William Montgomery and the state's Department of Health Services, in Maricopa County (Phoenix, AZ) Court.

The Weltons have been threatened with arrest, based on nitpicking, parsed technicalities that state officials claim exist in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act (AMMA), if they pursue the cannabis extract treatments despite that treatment's success with their five-year-old son's chronic, life-threatening and debilitating epilepsy.

The Welton's dilemma motivates law enforcement anti-pot zealots to play bad cop

After two unsuccessful brain surgeries, the Weltons were at their wit's end as their son Zander's seizures increased and his condition worsened while he was prescribed more pharmaceuticals with side effects and no benefits.

Then they viewed a surprisingly positive and accurate mainstream (CNN) documentary by Dr. Sanjay Gupta called "Weed," which centered its story on a Colorado couple whose daughter was having 300 seizures a week with a similar chronic malady.

The Weltons immediately applied and obtained a medical marijuana permit. They copied the Colorado family's successful therapy of using an oil or tincture extracted from hemp high in cannabidiol (CBD) and low in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), with a ratio between 20:1 or 25:1 CBD to THC. Not a stoner's delight for sure, but medically very effective.

The Welton's are forced to get an oil extract high in CBDs simply because medical marijuana dispensaries don't have many customers who want their marijuana to be low in THC, the active psychotropic that gets one high.

The Dr. Gupta CNN documentary's conservative Colorado couple had reluctantly researched medical marijuana as a last resort. They obtained a permit, which requires two physician's recommendations in Colorado for juveniles.

Once they finally got their permit, they had a medical technician extract the appropriate ratios of CBD to THC that is effective for epilepsy. The documentary "Weed" covers that saga well.

Considering their child's near-death catatonic condition and that his only movements came from seizures, the results from a couple of months' treatments using high-CBD, low-THC cannabis extract were miraculous. That's what drove the Weltons to use an extract with high CBD levels and low THC levels for their son Zander. They also realized great results in a short time.

But the Maricopa County Attorney and the Health Services Department both seized this situation probably to express their disdain for medical marijuana use by inventing clauses in the AMMA that prohibit using any extracts from the marijuana plant and warning the Weltons that they were positioning themselves to be arrested.

According to the Weltons and their ACLU attorney, Emma Anderson, no such wording exists in the AMMA voted into acceptance by Arizona citizens. Instead, the AMMA "plainly states that patients can use 'any mixture of preparation' made from the dried flowers of the marijuana plant by 'consum[ing] [them] as food or drink.'"

Due to his condition, Zander has problems ingesting the whole plant. The ACLU is suing for the state to accept the Weltons' petition so they can continue Zander's successful extract treatment modality without fear of arrest.

You can watch the Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN "Weed" documentary here (http://www.youtube.com).

Sources for this article include:

http://www.courthousenews.com

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com

http://science.naturalnews.com