Florida: Family Hopeful For Low-THC Marijuana Dispensaries

[Jacob Redmond]

Medical marijuana is a hot-button issue across the country and Florida is now one step closer to implementing a 2014 law that allows a medicinal form of the plant to be grown and sold in the state.

The Florida Department of Health announced this week that several organizations across the state have been approved to become dispensaries.

The Chestnut Hill Tree Farm in Alachua is one of five locations around the state approved to dispense low-THC cannabis and many people believe it will change their lives.

Angie and David Tate of Yulee are the parents of four girls and their 14-year-old daughter Gracie Tate started having epileptic seizures when she was just seven.

"We're excited because it's something we want to try," Angie Tate said.

"She was just a normal kid and then one day she had a horrible seizure. The full-fledged on the ground shaking, convulsing, it was the first time she ever had one," David Tate said.

And the seizures didn't stop. Seven years, countless doctor's visits and prescriptions later the family said Gracie still has multiple seizures a day.

She's no longer able to attend school because her current medications cause liver damage, blindness, depression and a number of other problems.

The Tates said word of legalized low-THC cannabis, for those with seizures like their daughter, is welcome news.

"Why would we not want to try something that's working for others? When you do the research, you see these kids out there that are taking it and they were 300 seizures plus. Now they're seizure free and of course, (we) want to try it," Angie Tate said.

Even Gracie Tate said she wants to try something else that may stop her seizures.

"My big wish is just try to get, try to go back to school and be a normal, a normal person," Gracie Tate said.

The Tates said the seizures and medications have robbed Gracie Tate of a normal life. They said they've tried everything else and cannabis would be a last resort, but it's an option they said they're grateful the state is making available.

"There's no side effects to it, there's no bad side to it, other that it's got that stigma with people, that it's marijuana. That's the only thing. If you take that away and you don't look at it from the medical side of it, and the people it can help and touch, why wouldn't you try it?" David Tate said.

The state health department will hold a workshop Dec. 9 to discuss rulemaking and procedure for the dispensaries once they open.

News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Florida Family Hopeful For Low-THC Marijuana Dispensaries
Author: Ethan Calloway
Contact: Email Author
Photo Credit: The Associated Press
Website: News 4 Jax

 

[420 Warrior]

Ok, this is certainly an awesome thing to finally be allowing medical Cannabis in Florida and I will always say that any baby step is still forward progress but where they are falling way short is the thing that every real dispensary out west already knows in that different strains of Cannabis are the key to treating different types of ailments.

I so wish that someone would take the time to go around to these fledgling medical Cannabis states, including here in GA where I live, and see to it that these people who think that it's a one strain fits all ailments type of thing get fully educated on what it is they are actually dealing with and that genetically removing all the THC out of a strain is not necessarily always a good thing because it's the THC that fights the depression caused by most life threatening ailments in the first place.

I'm not wanting to sound negative here because I am totally in favor of anyone willing to give Cannabis as medicine a chance in any way shape or form but I just want these people to be fully informed and educated in all this remarkable plant can do and not just keeping it so limited to only this ailment or that ailment, when there are so many other suffering people who need Cannabis too but can't have it because it's not on their "list of ailments" they're willing to try it on. It's really totally unfair to deny one person who needs access to it while allowing another full access to it just because they have a different ailment.

I guess the thing that really get's me most is that the research has already been done by doctors and scientist's in California and many other states, as well as by doctors and scientist's throughout the world that have had medicinal Cannabis for many years now but the people in these fledgling states don't seem to trust that research for some reason, they act like the doctors and scientist's in those places are just a bunch of pot smoking wackos or something? Why would you do that? Why wouldn't you value the opinions of people who have spent so much time researching and testing and writing paper after paper on the subject? It's a slap in the face to those who have done all that work for someone to act like "Oh, but we're only going to trust and accept this as medicine for just these few things and all those others it's proven to help, we don't trust it enough to let those people have it no matter what the research says". That's the thing I can't accept!