A Fountain Valley mother told Good Morning America this week that marijuana saved her 10-year-old autistic son's life.
“At first I did some research, and I found a doctor who actually had a protocol for medical marijuana in children diagnosed with autism,” says Mieko Hester-Perez.
She turned to feeding cannabis-loaded brownies to her son Joey
Perez when his weight had become dangerously low
due to his unwillingness to eat.
]
“You could see the bones in his chest,” she said of the boy, who only weighed 46 pounds. “He was going to die.”
The
mom told the national morning news program that she herself has never
used pot, but she is convinced, “The marijuana balanced my son. My son
had self-injurious
behaviors. He was extremely aggressive, he would run out of our
house . . . he was a danger to himself and others.”
Of the 122 comments to the online version of the GMA
story as this post was being banged out, most applauded the mother's
choice. Another mother even indicated she will look into medical
marijuana for her autistic child.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.