SALT LAKE CITY — As a medical cannabis cardholder, when I think about what the many faces of medical cannabis in Utah look like my first thought isn’t people feeling the need to hide their consumption. But not everyone sees cannabis for what it is.
Imagine your son has been sick for years, but you can’t figure out why. You’re a well-educated single mother who knows how to look things up, but your research only produces more question marks. Eating makes your son vomit, which over time leaves him thin, lackluster, and depressed. Doctors prescribe a regimen of medications for the treatment of his pain, anxiety, and ADHD. All are full of ingredients you don’t fully understand. Not even a biopsy helps.
Rightfully, your concern escalates. After a while, that precious boy begins to deteriorate right in front of you. He doesn’t look the way he should, and he’s afraid to eat in front of his friends at school. As a result, he’s anxious; often bedridden. Nothing is working, so what does one do?
This is where a Utah schoolteacher named Becky, and her son Allen’s medical cannabis story begins. They live in one of our smaller communities, which it turns out, has only intensified an already difficult situation.
Here’s the sticky bit. Though eager to share a transformative life experience about discovering a life-saving medication for her child, and despite the fact medical cannabis is legal here, she feels an urgent need to be top-secret about treating her child with cannabis. Asking why is an excellent question.
Arguably, the insane stigma long hinged to cannabis is a manufactured, racially targeted thing brought to life by Harry Anslinger, who was this country’s first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). He lit the bigoted fire on cannabis back in the 1930s. Yet with everything going on in our rapidly changing, untethered lives today, it seems many Utah medical cannabis cardholders are still made to carry it.
I’ll bet every one of Utah’s legal cardholders, regardless of where they live, has a family member affected by the good cannabis brings.
I count myself among them. And, with more than 16,000 active medical cannabis cardholders and counting in Utah, the way such stigma influences people has important implications for everyone in this lovely state.
Walk in Mom’s shoes a moment. Ask yourself, how would you respond to being made to feel “criminal” for choosing to treat your child with legal medicine because your community isn’t as accepting of that medication as it could be. What if you honestly felt you had to hide it as some people do?
Though legal protections of her son’s cannabis treatment, her employment in relation to it and her life choices are in place, she continues to feel the need to keep this close. Do you?
Related Article: Salt-Baked Patient Profile | Managing Autism and Blindness with Cannabis
Whichever side of the table you sit on, I say, let’s do better on behalf of those we love and care for. If you’re reading this with any lingering doubts about the efficacy and wonderfulness that is cannabis, here’s some of the good stuff for you to consider.
Since beginning cannabis treatment for her son in June of this year with flower and edibles from WholesomeCo Dispensary in Bountiful, Utah, Mom said her young man has since become an entirely different person.
After seeing an online ad from Terra Health and Wellness located in Millcreek, she made an appointment there with Dr. Jason Major, and everything changed. Her son is gaining weight; he’s out of bed, looks more healthy, and he can keep vitamins in his body. He eats, and his vomiting is for the most part under control.
Amid this very good news there remain many challenges. Mom said high medication costs and a four-hour round trip to the nearest pharmacy are taking their financial toll on a single mom with two children. A story true for many patients living in Utah. She also said, it seemed to her that trying to cover symptoms with so many medications to make him feel better just made things worse. He was miserable. The cannabis route, however, has helped him 100 percent.
Imagine. A few months of cannabis treatment removing years of painful, emotionally crippling symptoms for a Mom and her son. “Cannabis is a miracle in my family,” Mom said,
“It shouldn’t have been our last resort; it should’ve been our first.”
Published in Salt Baked City Print Magazine – Spring 2021
