It’s been kind of a rough patch lately. We’ve had some great visits and some awful visit since my last post, and recently even got to go to the beach with Alex (his home staff drove the kids to the coast and we met them there). Today’s was one of the worst in a while. He was hurting himself at least once every five or ten minutes. It started out with him angry, had some ups and downs, and ultimately ended with him angry. His face was beet-red from all the hitting he’d been doing. We lasted two hours before I just couldn’t keep watching it.
But now we have a problem. Alex’s MMJ card has expired and the nearest alternative medicine clinic won’t even discuss renewal for his “delicate” situation. We’re talking to his primary care physician soon, but I don’t have any reason to believe we’ll get any further given that we basically got a “no” from a clinic whose sole purpose is to determine eligibility for the card.
This puts us in a terrible position. If it were just medicating myself, I’d easily choose medication of legality. But breaking the law for Alex is a much tougher situation, because if we did, and got caught, a lot more would be at stake than just myself. I don’t even want to know what the “save the children” idiots would recommend.
And then tonight, I read this appalling article from OregonLive that basically states how awful Oregon’s medical marijuana laws are. I can’t deny they have their problems (no dispensaries, for instance), but their reasons are very different from mine. I became livid when reading one of their proposed “fixes” for the laws:
Lawmakers who are inclined to try to fix it could start with age restrictions on who can hold a card. Right now, anyone, including teenagers, can apply.
To these people, Alex’s extreme case is just tough luck. They’d rather children like Alex suffer from using toxic medications like Haldol than use marijuana in any form.
Of course my entire argument is meaningless as long as we can’t get a real prescription for marijuana. As long as Alex can’t get a regular dose, anything we can give isn’t likely to do much more than provide temporary relief. So my problem with their article isn’t so much how it affects Alex, but how it sways the general public into believing that Alex should suffer because of the supposed dangers of pot.