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RainDog

(28,784 posts)
Thu Jun 26, 2014, 12:47 AM Jun 2014

Update: Austin, TX PASSES resolution supporting medical marijuana

Last edited Fri Jun 27, 2014, 12:52 AM - Edit history (1)

Updated: Thursday, June 26 2014, 01:39 PM CDT UPDATE: The Austin City Council voted Thursday to support legislation in the next Texas legislative session to legalize medical marijuana.

http://www.keyetv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/updated-austin-council-back-medical-marijuana-legislation-18974.shtml

Read More at: http://www.keyetv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/updated-austin-council-back-medical-marijuana-legislation-18974.shtml


http://www.kvue.com/story/news/local/2014/06/24/austin-city-council-medical-marijuana-resolution/11329991/

Two council members are sponsoring the resolution, and an Austin mother says she'll be watching this item closely.

...Thalia Michelle, believes medical cannabis could help her (autistic) son. "It could help with his hyperactivity, cognition, focus [and] even speech," she said. "This isn't just about smoking for nausea and pain anymore."

She says in states where medical marijuana is legal, parents are giving autistic children cannabis oil. She says the plant-based extract is giving many hope for the future.

For Vincent Lopez, living with muscular dystrophy means pain 24-hours a day, and he says medical marijuana is the only way to ease his agony.


This article, from the autism support network, talks about one mother's use of marijuana for her son's autism.

http://www.autismsupportnetwork.com/news/autism-treatment-marijuana-madness-8763721

...she typed “autism and medical marijuana” into an internet search engine and the name Dr. Bernard Rimland popped up. Rimland is a former director of the Autism Research Institute who wrote about using medical marijuana to treat autism.

“I’m not pro-drug, but I am very much pro-safe and effective treatment, especially in cases when an autistic individual’s behaviors are devastating and do not respond to other interventions,” Rimland once wrote. “Early evidence suggests that medical marijuana may be an effective treatment for autism, as well as being safer than the drugs that doctors routinely prescribe.”

According to the Autism Research Institute, some of the symptoms marijuana has improved in children with autism include anxiety, aggression, panic disorder, tantrums and self-injurious behavior. Though Rimland died in 2006, his ideas continue to draw interest from parents with children on the spectrum.

The improvements continue to be evident, she says, as Joey is now smiling and even attempting to talk—things he never did before. Having appeared on Good Morning America and other media outlets, Hester-Perez is spreading the word about medical marijuana and autism. She has even started her own website, uf4a.org. “There are definitely other parents who are using it but I’m just the only parent that’s gone public,” she says.


Bernard Rimland, a doctor of psychology, was also the founder of the Autism Society of America. After his son was born with severe autism, Bernard directed his research toward autism. Rimland challenged the prevailing view that autism was a result of defective parenting, a view the person who first coined the autism dx shared with pop psychologists such as Bruno Bettelheim (whose views came out of Freudian theories.) Rimland's work changed the focus of autism research and thinking about the issue to a view that autism has neurological (biological) foundations, not psychological.



Dr. Lester Grinspoon, mentioned in the video, above, was close friends with Carl Sagan. Both were professors at Harvard. While Sagan was an enthusiastic supporter of cannabis for its value as a spur to his thinking, Grinspoon was much more reserved - even opposed, initially, to the widespread use of marijuana on Harvard's campus by students and faculty. Then Grinspoon's son was dx'd with leukemia. His wife acquired marijuana for their son and his oncology team told the Grinspoons they could bring the cannabis to the medical center and their son could smoke there, before his chemotherapy, rather than in the car, because the doctors were so amazed at the positive effect of marijuana for wasting and nausea.

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