A seven year old girl who lives in Oregon has leukemia. She is one of 52 children who qualifies through the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program to receive medical marijuana for pain, nausea, and cancer. Her mother approves of this, but her father does not.
Medical marijuana is a controversial topic. Some states have made it legal for a person to use medical marijuana as a form of treatment for specific, serious, health conditions. Two states, Washington and Colorado, recently made it legal for a person to consume marijuana for any reason. The federal government, on the other hand, considers marijuana to be an illegal substance.
Mykayla Comstock is seven years old. She was diagnosed with T-Cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia on July 14, 2012. She receives chemotherapy as a form of treatment. With the chemotherapy, doctors have put Mykayla’s odds of survival at 76.9%, and her chance of relapse at 7%.
According to the Facebook page that Mykayla’s mother, Erin Purchase, created, Mykayla’s treatment plan involves chemotherapy that includes a multitude of chemotherapy drugs that are given intravenously and through intramuscular injections. She will have to undergo this treatment until she is 10 years old. The treatment has caused her to lose her hair and to feel nausea and pain.
Mykayla is one of 52 children who has been approved for medical marijuana through the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program. To qualify, the child must have a qualifying medical condition, the parent must give consent, and the child’s doctor must approve.
Oregon law does not require monitoring of a child’s medical marijuana use by a pediatrician. The state also does not impose standards about the quality, safety, or potency in the production of the marijuana that is used.
Mykayla’s marijuana comes from what her mother’s boyfriend, Brandon Krenzler, grows. Both he, and Erin Purchase, use marijuana recreationally. Mykayla says that the medical marijuana helps her to eat and to sleep. She is not smoking it. Instead, she consumes capsules of the drug that have been synthesized into a liquid form. Sometimes, she eats food that contains marijuana.
On the other side of the story, is Mykayla’s father, Jesse Comstock. He is divorced from Mykayla’s mother. Once, when his daughter was visiting him, she appeared to be, in his words, “stoned out of her mind”. He contacted child welfare officials, police, and Mykayla’s doctors. He does not want his daughter to be using medical marijuana.
The American Academy of Pediatrics are also concerned about children who are using medical marijuana. They do not feel that marijuana is a medicine. They note that the studies that show that the drug is effective against nausea and vomiting have been done on adults, not children.
Image by David Trawin on Flickr