Babble’s Top 30 Autism Facebook Fan Pages is full of groups ranging from Autism Action UK, a National non-profit group raising awareness in the UK to Cannabis for Autism, which hosts an entire community surrounding the efficacy and benefits about treating autism, and symptoms of autism, with cannabis.
Mieko Hester-Perez, who was recently filmed by Diane Sawyer for an upcoming segment on ABC’s World News, as well as for a longer portion that will air on ABC’s Nightline later this month, also made the cut on the Babble’s Top 30 list for her foundation, the Unconventional Foundation for Autism, in less than 24 hours after registering.
“The fact that Autism Speaks didn’t make this list (emphasis added)Ā isn’t saying much,” says one mother, who turned to the group when her son was first diagnosed because her child needed support, as did his mother, but “they have a big office in New York City so they have lots [of donated monies] going to their own overhead, and marketing. Ā They asked me to donate and that was about it. Ā I was the one asking them for donations.”
“Plus they are searching for a cure, which isn’t possible,” chimed in parent who explained that “it’s not life-threatening, it’s just another way of teaching an adult how to parent. What I’ve learned about myself, my wife and family, and about this world, I learned because of my son.”
Medical Marijuana 411 spoke with a director of a school in Southern California, a special needs school that integrates roughly 20% of their student population with non-special needs children, who says that “as a parent, I’ve turned to using medical cannabis with my adult autistic son, and invite this conversation with all of our parents. Ā Adding, “although very few parents are receptive to the thought initially, because I’m the director of their child’s school and with a special needs child of my own, they tend to listen to me just long enough for them to learn the facts.”
If you hold up a hammer, all you see is a nail
While the medical community has made great strides in understanding the Endocannabinoid System, it has take quite some time for that information to make it into the mainstream.
Even the fact that when mainstream media talks about this issue, they have to have a substance abuse specialist as if it’s a dangerous drug. Ā There is ample evidence to the contrary, yet so-called ‘experts’ debate the morality of using a ‘drug’ that they themselves grew up associating with a negative connotation.
When substance abuse specialists, often time not doctors, are brought on as a counter-argument to why medical marijuana should remain illegal, even for those terminally ill, because of the moral ‘implications’ I often wonder what they are implying to those who are in fact terminally ill. Ā Do they consider them criminals because so-called ‘experts’ are paid to go on television and beat the dead horse of marijuana prohibition until it’s twelve feet under?
For people who are not doctors, and doctors for that matter, to say to anyone who finds relief from an awful moment in one’s life that they don’t matter, is not only against the hippocratic oath, but against morality in general.
