Parents Deliver Letters Urging Christie To Sign Bill Allowing Kids To Use Medical Marijuana
TRENTON, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- You first heard their story on CBS 2 -- a family fighting to make medical marijuana easily accessible to their sick daughter and other children suffering like her.
As CBS 2's Christine Sloan reported Thursday, they took their cause straight to New Jersey's governor.
Holding a letter to Gov. Chris Christie, 2-year-old Vivian Wilson and other children like her who suffer from seizures walked to his office with their parents to urge him to sign a bill that would make it easier for them to get medical marijuana.
"Every seizure just hurts," said an emotional Meghan Wilson, Vivian's mother. "You know it is a horrible thing ... to have to see your daughter suffer like this."
Little Vivian has a potentially deadly form of epilepsy called Dravet Syndrome. She wears glasses because even the light can trigger a seizure. She's stopped breathing twice.
Her parents say a strain of marijuana that doesn't give users a high is the only thing that helps her.But the state's medical marijuana law, they say, prevents them from getting what she needs.
"The difficulty is being, getting people to listen, getting people to understand that we're not looking to get our children high. Getting people to understand that there are a lot of people who need this," father Brian Wilson said.
Kids like Joey Mathewson and Jenna Toy.
"It is frustrating. What's most frustrating is the lack of education," said Tina DeSilvio, Jenna's mother.
They said it's impossible to get a meeting with Christie, who was out of town Thursday, but they dropped off boxes filled with letters of support. While the Governor's Office would not comment, Christie has said on the radio he's examining the bill.
"I want to make sure that if we do it, we do it in a way that's helpful to children … does not reduce any of the requirements of the program to make sure that this does not go down a slippery slope," Christie said.
"Don't put yourself between us and our doctors ... Doctors know more than the government knows," Brian Wilson said.
The parents said the longer the governor waits to sign this bill the longer children like Vivian will suffer.
Families said the law also requires them to get three physicians to sign off on treatment, which is hard to do.
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