Article Title: Keeping medical cannabis from children is callous, and foolish

Article Summary

This article deals with the topic of medicinal marijuana and how it has helped patients worldwide. It also touches on the topic that children should be allowed medicinal marijuana in extreme cases and it should be legalised in Britain.

With the opening of the first medical marijuana dispensaries in Pennsylvania thousands of patients with serious medical conditions have registered to access the drug, which comes in oils, patches and vaporisers, rather than smokable leaf form. The author gives us an example of a mother who campaigned for this movement of legalising medicinal marijuana in Pennysylvania for his son with severe epilepsy and how this medicine has improved her son’s life drastically. The author’s daughter too has epilepsy and shares his experience with us.

The author expresses that it is callous and morally confused to stop patients accessing a cheap, safe and readily available drug that could improve life so dramatically. Polls find that more than two-thirds of Britons and more than half of MPs back the use of medical marijuana. It is also irresponsible to ignore its fiscal potential, given the importance of the pharmaceutical sector to a country’s economy.He raises a point that while big Pharma companies are not in use of medicinal marijuana , states which have legalised this have reduced the number of opioid deaths in their state.

He also narrates the story of a pharmacist who was at first embarrassed to be linked to the cannabis trade and later became a convinced advocate after seeing changes in patients using the drug, especially for chronic pain, late-stage cancer and complex child epilepsy. The author concludes that helpless children should not suffer because the politicians of the country do not allow medicinal use of marijuana and thus should be legalised .

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Words to Learn from this article:

Epilepsy: a neurological disorder marked by sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness, or convulsions, associated with abnormal electrical activity in the brain.

Befuddled: cause to become unable to think clearly

Stupor: a state of near-unconsciousness or insensibility