Argentina lgalises medical marijuana

Argentina Legalise Medical Marijuana

Argentina Legalise Medical Marijuana

Argentina Legalises Medical Marijuana, and it’s FREE for patients

  • The Argentinean Senate passed a bill legalising medical cannabis following Congress’s approval of the move late last year
  • Certain patients will have free access to the medication
  • Government agencies will be allowed to grow marijuana for research purposes

“The oil means that Benja is free of the medications and seizures.” – Yamila Casagrande

Argentina has joined the ranks of Southern American countries, Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia and Chile, by passing a bill which will allow its sickest citizens access to medical marijuana. The bill was passed unanimously by the Argentine Senate, 58-0, guaranteeing patients access to cannabis oil and other cannabis derivatives for medicinal purposes. The ban on importing medical cannabis will be removed, as well as offering free access to the medicine for certain patients who qualify, such as those suffering from epilepsy, MS and autism.

Personal grows will remain a punishable offence, however, still carrying a two-year prison sentence. Commercial grows will retain their 15-year maximum sentence. The measures within the bill will become law once it is signed by Argentina’s President, Mauricio Macri, whose Cambiemos Party sponsored the bill. Patients will be able to gain free access to their choice of medicine due to the creation of a medicinal cannabis research programme at Argentina’s Health Ministry, which “must guarantee free access” to oil and other derivatives of cannabis to patients who join up to the programme.

One such benefactor will be a Benjamín, who was diagnosed with West Syndrome just months after birth. The two-and-a-half-year-old suffers between 200-300 seizures a day and his body has been rejecting the pharmaceutical medicines he has been prescribed. His mother, Yamila Casagrande told EL PAÍS how important cannabis oil is to her son: “The oil means that Benja is free of the medications and seizures. Now he just takes a drop a day the size of a grain of rice.

While the law is a step forward in the right direction, it’s failure to allow for personal grows is frustrating, as Yamila explains: “We are happy, but we’re also aware that the law is not perfect because we were fighting for the legalisation of personal cultivation. “Still, we have opened a door and it is great that the dire existing law has been modified.”

With Argentina joining the elite club of countries which grants its citizens access to medicinal cannabis, one question stands out: when will the UK finally listen to scientific consensus and allow its sickest citizens access to this valuable medicine?


Hero English Mother Treats Son's Cancer with Cannabis - The Story of "The Boy in 7 Billion"

Hero English Mother Treats Son’s Cancer with Cannabis – The Story of “The Boy in 7 Billion”

Hero English mother, Callie Blackwell, appears on ITV to tell nation how cannabis helped her son dying from cancer

  • Deryn Blackwell was suffering from a rare form of cancer Langerhans Cell Sarcoma
  • Callie, Deryn’s brave mother, turned to cannabis after he was given three days to live
  • The young man has made a full recovery and now plans to open a Vegan café
  • “The Boy In Seven Billion,” the book written by Callie about her son’s amazing recovery is to be published on April 6

Would you give your dying son cannabis to ease his pain? This is exactly what the courageous Callie Blackwell did for her son, Deryn, after their family were told he had three days left to live.  Deryn Blackwell was diagnosed with leukaemia aged just 10. From there, his health continued to gradually deteriorate. In 2012, when he turned 12, Deryn joined one of the most exclusive clubs in the world: he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called Langerhans cell sarcoma, putting him in the “one in a billion club”. Only five people on the entire planet have the same disease.

“After four years of treatment it’s enough.” – Deryn Blackwell

After four unsuccessful bone marrow transplants, and on his 14th birthday, Deryn began to plan his funeral.

The pain and suffering which comes with four years of unsuccessful treatments took its toll. The young boy had begun to accept that he was about to die. He told the hosts of ITV’s This Morning, “One you accept it, it becomes very calming, quite nice in a sense […] after four years of treatment it’s enough.”

It was at this point that his heroic mother, Callie, turned to cannabis as a last resort. Whilst Callie was researching any possible way to ease her son’s suffering, cannabis kept on coming up in her searches.

Deryn suffering in the hospital before receiving treatment with cannabis

Asked by Phillip Schofield how she came about giving her son cannabis, the mother explained: “Through lots of research.

“I’d done lots of research when his secondary cancer arrived, as it was so unknown. I turned to the internet and started looking, and over the following months and years cannabis just kept popping up.”

Days after his final bone marrow transplant, Deryn trapped his fingers causing incredible pain and putting him at serious risk, due to the fact that his lack of white blood cells left his immune system non-existent.

Following this, and being given just days left to live, Callie decided that she might as well give the controversial treatment a go. Her doctors, however, were unable to prescribe the dying child Bedrocan (pharmaceutical cannabis).

“He was so incredibly ill, and on a high dose of Fentanyl, the highest potency morphine, and it wasn’t working,” she explained on This Morning. “I asked the doctor for Bedrocan, because I wanted to go through the proper measures. She told me ‘we can’t because it hasn’t been licensed for children.”

Deryn and his mother Callie now

Forced away from clinically tested and properly produced cannabis, the desperate mother was forced to buy some cannabis from the street of a dealer. Callie and her husband proceeded to cook the cannabis into a tincture after finding instructions online.

They began to notice an improvement almost immediately: “Honestly, the effects of it blew my mind, it wasn’t what I expected,” Callie told Holly Willoughby.

“All I expected was, I heard people say how it helped alleviate their anxiety and some pain, and that’s what Deryn was experiencing.

“Within half an hour to an hour, that he was just chilled out, he just relaxed. He wasn’t panicking.”

The cannabis went far beyond just alleviating pain and anxiety, however. In a miraculous turn of events, the young boy’s health began to slowly improve.

Callie continued, “They told us there was nothing in his bone marrow.

“We gave it [the cannabis tincture] to him, and five days later when the bandages came off, and we saw healthy fingers… We were told there was no way they would be, under there, the doctor started panicking.”

Deryn had begun to do what the doctors had thought impossible: improve. Suddenly, his white blood cell count appeared, after being told that he had literally nothing in his marrow by his doctors. Could cannabis have been the variable which triggered this improvement?

Callie didn’t want to leave this question unanswered. She tested whether the cannabis was behind her son’s improvement by withdrawing it from his treatment. His white count began to fall.

Callie wasn’t able to tell her son’s doctors that she was giving her son the cannabis. The heroic mother kept giving her son the cannabis tincture, applied under his tongue, in varying amounts to see if it really was having an effect. One thing was clear: when Deryn was given cannabis tincture his white count rose when it was take away it fell.

Callie stressed that she doesn’t want to claim cannabis is a miracle cure. She told the BBC: “I’m not saying it’s a cure, but it’s definitely a treatment we need to look more into.”

This couldn’t be more true. More research into the medicinal properties and possible illnesses it could treat or symptoms it could alleviate is needed.

Callie wrote her book, “The Boy in 7 Billion,” to put her and her son’s story out into the world to try and help others that may want to try the same cannabis treatment, but may be sceptical or worried.

Callie now believes that her family was put through the appalling ordeal for a greater purpose: “Through everything, I always believed things happen for a reason.  “Now I think maybe that reason is to tell Deryn’s story to others. And hopefully it may start a wider conversation about treatments for cancer and help others. Then, yes, it will all have been for a good reason.”

Being able to find something positive from a horrific situation demonstrates the strength of this brave mother’s character. Britain needs more heroes like Callie to stand up and say ‘No’ to the country’s outdated laws concerning medical cannabis. Anything could have happened in this scenario due to these backwards laws. Forcing despairing parents into contributing to the criminal underworld, potentially risking burning their kitchen down to cook cannabis oil does not seem like a rational policy for a government to pursue. Not only could something have gone wrong in the process of cooking the tincture, but due to inexperience and lack of proper knowledge and equipment, the finished product could have failed, and brave Deryn would no longer be with us.

Thankfully, Callie and her husband were able to successfully make the tincture and Deryn is still alive today. In fact, the brave teen is now pursuing his dreams of becoming a vegan chef.  Deryn sums the whole situation up perfectly. Speaking to the BBC the courageous young man said: “Definitely worthwhile. I’m still here and not in a hospice or in a grave.”


Irish Mother's Battle for her Daughter's Right to Life Saving Cannabis Medicine

Irish Mother’s Battle for her Daughter’s Right to Life Saving Cannabis Medicine

“Heartbroken” Irish mother walked length of Ireland to try and get life-saving medical marijuana for sick daughter.

  • Courageous Vera Twomey walked 260km from Cork down to Dublin in desperate attempt to get access to cannabis-based medication for her daughter
  • Ava Barry, Vera’s daughter, suffers from Dravey Syndrome, a rare intractable form of epilepsy, which cannot be treated by pharmaceutical medicines
  • Vera was granted a meeting with Irish Minister of Health, Sam Harris, after arriving in Dublin with hundreds of supporters, only to be left “heartbroken”
  • “What would you do if it was your child, and if there was a solution out there that could ease your child’s suffering? What would you do to go and get it?”

What lengths would you go to end your child’s suffering? Vera Twomey, an Irish mother of 4, answered this question when she began her grueling 260km walk from Cork to Dublin. Her intention: to get her daughter legal access to cannabis-based medicine for her intractable epilepsy.

Vera’s 7-year-old daughter, Ava, was on 11 different pharmaceuticals just to try and control the debilitating impact the seizures from her epilepsy were having on her life. The legal drugs were not properly alleviating her condition, leaving the poor child to suffer up to 500 seizures a month, or roughly 20 seizures a day. The pharmaceuticals were also having horrendous side-effects, often having a devastating impact on Ava, leaving her incapacitated. This all changed when Vera discovered the medicinal qualities of cannabis. 

Since starting her treatment on CBD extract from cannabis last October, Ava’s seizures have been reduced to 5-7 a month! However, it’s not just the CBD oil which Ava is in need of to help control her seizures. Vera believes that if her daughter could get access to THC as well as CBD, her seizures could be reduced even further. Vera told The Journal: “We are badly in need of THC as well as the CBD to treat Ava’s seizures. People who use THC with the CBD see further improvement in the control of the seizures.

“The difficulty is that THC is not legal over 0.02% here in Ireland, so the consultants are not in a position to be able to prescribe it at the 1-2% which we need it to be.”

Vera’s request for medicinal cannabis containing THC has so far been denied by Ireland’s Health Minister, Sam Harris on the grounds that a paediatric neurologist could not sign off on it. Mr. Harris released a statement outlining that he is able to meet her, but that it is not within his power “to provide medicinal cannabis” in the immediate future.

Following an initial promising meeting with Mr. Harris earlier this week, Vera was left “heartbroken” after being forced home following a second, more disappointing meeting. Recommendations from the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) on medicinal cannabis allow the Minister to grant a licence for access to cannabis for medical purposes in individual cases when an application is endorsed by a consultant “who is responsible for the management of the patient”. Vera was not granted these vital documents despite her courageous efforts. In a tear-filled video, Vera expressed her dismay that she had been hung out to dry by her Government: “These important documents were to take a few hours to arrange after several attempts to contact officials regarding the eta of these documents with no response it took certain actions by TDs to eventually make contact with officials regarding said issue.

“This resulted in Paul (Vera’s husband) making a trip to collect these papers at six thirty this evening. This callous indifference to our family resulted in a further day in Dublin and an unnecessary day for my children to be without their mother.”

“The enclosed documents hold none of the important documents necessary and promised to us by Simon Harris last night. It is truly, truly disgraceful.”

The Irish public, however, has shown enormous support for Vera and her cause. Hundreds of people have joined her on various legs of her journey, including Irish politicians and even schoolchildren:

Irish MEP, Luke Flannagan, joined Vera in her walk, from Johnstown in County Kilkenn. The MEP has been extremely critical of Sam Harris, the Health Minister, who Vera is hoping to meet and plea with later tonight.

He wrote in a FaceBook post: “He [Sam Harris] is a man with a lot of power but completely without the balls to use it. He has hidden behind the HPRA report.

“He has shown no leadership. He has abdicated his duties. A Minister for Health should care for those in pain. Our Minister does not.”

If the Minister of Health cannot help his citizens from serious medical issues by legalizing a plant which has consistently been proven in medical trials and studies to have a significant impact on reducing epileptic seizures, then who can? Surely Mr. Harris is exactly the person to put an end to this little girl’s suffering.

While Vera may have been hung-out to dry by some of her politicians, the support she has received from the public has been huge, and it has not gone unnoticed. Commenting on the reaction she has received from the public, Vera said: “I’m just so grateful that people care around the country.”

Vera’s determination was shown when she vowed to stay in Dublin outside the Irish Parliament (the Dáil Éireann) until she was met by the Irish Minister for Health, Sam Harris: “If you don’t come out on Tuesday, I’ll be here on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, and every other day until we get this issue resolved.”

Even though the brave mother had to return home due to her injuries and to be with her children, her message has begun to resonate with the national and international community.

The Irish public has already shown their support for Vera and Ava. Hundreds of supporters joined her as she arrived at the Dáil

Vera’s story is one of strength and resilience; of compassion and an un-dying love for her daughter. CBD-oil has already proven to drastically reduce Ava’s intractable epileptic seizures, if there’s even a small chance of THC reducing these seizures then what possible reason could the Irish Government have to reject her request? It’s out of our hands now, and up to the politicians. However, they will need encouraging in the right direction, if Mr. Harris’ previous comments are anything to go by.

Sign and share the petition below to show your support for Vera and Ava, and ‘like’ their FaceBook for updates: