In 2012, Connecticut lawmakers passed a law allowing the use of medical marijuana for adults, but the same law also barred anyone under the age of 18 from participating in the program, a decision that has left thousands of parents of severely ill children without safe access to cannabis medicine. That mistake was rectified today as Governor Daniel Malloy signed House Bill 5450 into law.
Titled “An Act Concerning The Palliative Use of Marijuana”, HB 5450 will expand the state’s medical marijuana program by allowing the certification of children under the age of 18 with certain medical conditions and allow them to possess and use non-smokable forms of medical marijuana, such as CBD and low THC oil. The new law will also register parents or legal guardians as caregivers, who must be responsible for purchasing cannabis medicine for the qualifying minor.
When the new law takes effect on October 1, 2016, patients under the age of 18 will be permitted to participate in a limited version of the state’s original medical marijuana program if two Connecticut doctors agree on the need for cannabis oil treatment if the child has at least one of the following qualifying conditions:
- Terminal illness requiring end of life care
- Irreversible spinal cord injury when intractable spasticity is present
- Cerebral Palsy
- Cystic Fibrosis
- Severe Epilepsy
- Intractable seizures
An alternative to harmful pharmaceutical drugs
Thousands of parents of children suffering from developmental disabilities, severe seizures, musculoskeletal diseases, cancer and more have turned to cannabis as a legitimate source of medicine for their severely sick and dying children over the last five years. As knowledge of this harmless, often life-changing plant spreads more and more parents are making the choice to either uproot their family and move to a state where their child can medicate legally, or they are turning to online patient-centered collectives like Copper Mountain Elixirs that are able to safely get high-quality, lab-tested cannabis medicine to them where they live.
Stephen Bradley, CEO of Copper Mountain Elixirs, tells us that states like Colorado, California, Oregon and Washington are seeing fewer and fewer “medical marijuana refugees” as reputable companies begin filling the gap for patients and getting lab tested CBD and low THC products to them where they live. “There are more companies willing to ship lab-tested, organic medicine to patients than there were four or five years ago” Stephen said. “Not only has the Justice Department relaxed enforcement on cannabis oil producers that operate within the confines of local and state law, but companies shipping medicine are finding little or no desire for intervention by postal authorities or private carriers. The products we help patients obtain are grown, extracted and bottled legally and shipped from a legal state to a state where possession of that product is legal. We do what we can, where we can.”
The last hope for some
Some parents, like Bridgett Liquori of Atlanta, have turned to cannabis oil as a last hope after being failed over and over by modern medicine. Bridgett’s 8-year-old daughter Lillyauhna was diagnosed last year with both a brain stem tumor and a tumor on her optic nerve. She is also the parent of a 13-year-old son with severe Autism and her four-year-old son suffers from Cerebral Palsy. And as if she didn’t have enough on her plate already, Bridgett’s father was recently diagnosed with late-stage esophageal cancer.
Needless to say, Bridgett has found a use for cannabis medicine for nearly every member of her family. While her daughter Lilly undergoes chemotherapy and takes low-THC oil in order to mitigate some of the side effects of that treatment (and hopefully repair some of the damage to her tiny body), Bridgett has created a crowdfunding campaign in order to raise money to try to save her father’s life with high-dose cannabis oil. It’s not cheap, but it is far less expensive than uprooting your family and moving to a state that considers medicine, medicine.
