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Now
imagine that you have an epileptic child who suffers excruciating pain then you
discover something that gives the child immediate relief. The only catch is: it
is illegal!
RT.com
reports some 100 frantic Chilean parents are knowingly breaking the law by
growing marijuana as an absolute last resort to keep their epileptic children
from enduring excruciating pain. It’s not legal, but they don’t see another
way, as the government is no help.
Their
reasons are simple: traditional medications are not effective and they cost
eight times as much as a month’s supply of cannabis oil.
One
parent was driven to such desperation that she was apparently seconds away from
driving her car off a cliff with her sick daughter in the passenger seat.
"All
I wanted to do was to die along with her,"
Paulina Bobadilla, 34, told the AP of her daughter’s epileptic seizures, which
the medication could no longer manage. The pain was so bad the girl would
easily tear her own nails out just to numb the sensation elsewhere.
On
that day in April 2013, the only thing that prevented her from carrying out her
wish to die together with her daughter were the words “Mommy, I love you.”
“I
looked at her and I knew I had to continue fighting,”
Bobadilla continued.
Unable
to watch their children suffer as they wait for Congressional approval, the
small group of 100 parents formed the Mama Cultiva (Mama Grows) collective. It
promotes the medical use of marijuana and pays no mind to jail time. Their
mission is to educate people with the necessary skills for cultivation and to
save their children from pain, as they grow the plant in their backyard. The
purpose is extracting cannabis oil – increasingly lauded by modern science for
its therapeutic effects on a whole range of conditions where traditional
medicine fails.
Sometimes
it’s not even about the benefits of traditional vs non-traditional medicine:
Bobadilla was struggling to set aside US$800 a month for approved medicine that
did not come close to alleviating her daughter’s suffering.
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Image
from Esteban Contreras Montoya's Facebook page
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The
price of producing a large crop of cannabis oil? US$100 – one-eighth the cost.
And the parents say there are actual benefits.
“We
are a group of mothers of children with refractory epilepsy associated with the
Daya Foundation [a body that supports the group]. We chose to use oil of cannabis,”
reads their mission statement on the Facebook page.
This
is not a commercial venture, they stress. All the cultivation and oil
extraction is done by the individuals. The organization exists only to pass the
knowledge on.
Right
now they are forced to hold secret meetings away from the eye of the law,
though it is no secret they grow the plant in their backyards. Punishment for
this could extend to 15 years’ jail. Under Chilean law, only consumption is
allowed, not production.
Another
mother that grows, Susana, would not give the AP her last name for fear of
prosecution. She says her sickly son screams from pain.
In
a cruel twist of fate, she was cheated by a dealer even after she explained
that the plants were for her ailing boy: he sold her the male variety, which
does not produce the oil.
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Image
from Mama Culitva Facebook page
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Another
woman, Gabriela Reyes, 23, had her seven-month-old in hospital the entire time
– the infant experiences up to 300 seizures each day. Remarkably, gaining some
knowledge in oil extraction, Gabriela was able to reduce the number of seizures
to just 12, just by adding a few drops of the oil to her daughter’s baby
bottle.
All of the parents noted
how their children were now able to “sleep better,” with results manifesting
themselves a mere week later.
Curiously,
although the Santiago government allowed a crop to be used in a study to
determine pain reduction effects in adult cancer patients, Mama Cultiva would
not be admitted to the program, the justification being that the group focuses
on children.
Although
some 15,000 Chilean children appear to be completely immune to legally-approved
treatment, the government won’t budge. Medical authorities and related agencies
claim the medicinal advantages of marijuana provide “insufficient evidence”
for a government program to be rolled out. They say evidence of the plant’s
harmful effects still far outweigh the benefits.
The
parents of children in agony beg to differ, and plan to continue flouting the
law in the face of Big Pharma pressure.
"We
have to make sure that the rights of users, of patients, to affordable medicine...
is guaranteed before the pharmaceutical industry takes it all over,"
says Ana Maria Gazmurri, president of the non-profit group supporting Mama
Cultiva Daya Foundation.
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