West Tarricone is a 9-year-old little girl and unfortunately, she is epileptic. In the case of West Tarricone, medical marijuana was the only treatment that worked. Rubbing cannabis oil on her gums as “rescue medicine” makes her seizures go way almost instantly. Her mother recalls the moment when she decided to try CBD oil:“I said immediately, this is a natural option, and I want this for my child. Something that could eliminate a lot of extra pharmaceutical medication in her system and be so simple and straightforward? This is something we needed for our daughter. “If you were in our position and you were running out of all pharmaceutical options, and here’s this hope at the end of a really bad tunnel for a child who’s going to prematurely die, you’re going to know.” But in order to get the actual treatment, her parents had to join the movement of parents seeking medical marijuana.
The fight for medical marijuana
In Tarricone’s state the bill approving cannabis as a palliative treatment for child seizures was passed in May 2016 and in October the law went in full effect. However, it was not easy to get to this point. A movement of parents demanded medical marijuana as treatment. Tarricone remembers the way the parents fought for CBD back in 2015: “We shared stories and made it personal, how it would affect us, how it would affect our children. I truly think that gave us the momentum. In that year, we had enough opportunity to educate legislators personally as to what the medication is, how it worked, how effective it could be, and that parents should really be the ones making that decision with their medical care providers.”
