Editorial: Case for medical marijuana

Photo / Michael Cunningham

The case for research and development of medical marijuana in New Zealand seems indefensible.

A Northland family has highlighted the benefits of the medical marijuana, and the lengths parents are prepared to go to for their kids.

Jessika Guest moved to Colorado where daughter Jade, 7, has qualified for a US medical card allowing her access to cannabis medicine.

Jade has hypotonia (a state of low muscle tone), global developmental delay and epilepsy, which used to leave her seizing up to 40 times a day.

However, her seizures have reduced to five or fewer a day, from 30 seconds each time to three to five seconds.

Jade has been using skin patches containing cannabinoids and tetrahydrocannabinolic acid, a form of non-activated THC which means the cannabis does not have high-inducing properties.

Jessika Guest reckons that after seven years, she is just starting to feel like she is getting to know Jade.

But Jessika, Jade and Ethan, 8, are seeing less of husband and father Brendan, who has remained in Whangarei working to support the family from afar.

There is a cannabis-derived product, Sativex on the market in New Zealand but it is expensive and only approved for patients with moderate to severe spasticity due to multiple sclerosis.

For more cannabis-derived products to become available, the Government has said it would be up to a manufacturer to seek approval.

The irony of New Zealand failing to explore cannabis's medicinal powers in a country infested with it, can't be ignored. There is anecdotal evidence that some desperate families turn to the illegal form of the drug, as they cannot access the legal derivative. The difference is huge - the latter does not contain the high-inducing THC component.

In other words, children are not getting stoned. They are getting better.

Surely, there must be an opportunity here for the policy-makers - not the drug manufacturers - to reap some good from a drug that has caused so much damage to our communities?