thank you so much for coming cardo thank you for having me cardoso you've been involved in marijuana reform for a number of years now how did you get involved in this war while it all started with my daughter she was having a tremendous amount of seizures  she was diagnosed with a severe form of epilepsy called lennox christo syndrome and she was having over three hundred seizures within a twenty four hour period we began to do some research and we found that cannabis was her best option  o now was this after the medical bill had already passed in new jersey in two thousand and ten yes so great so your daughter was able to take advantage of the program and she was able to use marijuana to control her seizures and how she doing now she's on excellent i mean we've been able to help decrease or seizures by over ninety percent so that that means that she's having a seizure maybe one every one to three weeks  kids and i understand that the lark school was actually the first school in the united states to allow by policy the administration of medical marijuana  really only flowers are available so do you need are you required to change those flowers into an oil of substance for for talking to take yes i am i make her oil pretty much every other week  pretty simple i mean you i mean you have a magical butter machine i mean it i understand it's really simple like that some people use a double boiler to boil the marijuana down into an oil but you have a magical but i'm sure i do have a magical butter machine we actually don't we found that turp penes all was very beneficial for my daughter the more we looked into how this was used as a medication we found that like earthy  ratio but also the term means and the other components of marijuana that may very well have a therapeutic effect on patients now the ac d c is that primarily c b d that's a high c b d yeah and what we've been able to most is by taking just a quarter ounce of that ac d c and mixing it with three quarters of an ounce of a high t h c and what that does is it gives her the entourage effect the entourage of fact as you know helps her receive as many can ave it's possible so that way because the problem is this research we don't have the legitimate research to pinpoint which pranab and we can actually battle and help control the the seizures and also the autism so we give her as many can happen and it's possible so that way she can just get every single benefit from those can happen sure sure but you know unfortunately it's trial and error you know would  you're going through so that and i'm sure that's difficult for a parent to you know basically experiment you know in on your child because you don't have the research done that would really finally say that or you don't have a physician available in new jersey to say ricardo you know here's the here's the ratio that you need for your daughter but but it's good to hear that you're having success with it in any great yeah and now has it have you just give us a piece of mind sure and i'm sure it's she's a lot more able to be educated issue if if she's not having seizures and she's not having you know if it's artistic if you're she's been able to actually you know potty train which is something that we were told that she would never be able to even walk and you know being able to to walk in and try to communicate because she is non verbal but she does when you met her and these days she's a totally different child oh that's great that's great ricky i'm glad to hear that and i understand that you were told originally that she had it in her life expectancy was not even  that lived her life expectancy she didn't know that you know that she has that at least access to the cannabis and the medicine that that she needs one hundred percent and i mean i've been told you know you know maybe so coincidence or maybe they're giving you worst case scenario but i can honestly tell you  i i live with my daughter i deal with my daughter every single day i was watching my daughter die before my eyes and this one time we took her to the park just like any other child wants to be at the park and play we put on the swing and we're pushing our on the swing and all of a sudden she has a seizure suddenly she flips up into the air and lands and to the back of her now she she don't continue seizing but wasn't breathing she got that great color you could tell she started to pass away so i grabbed her i was scared because i thought she might have had a neck injury but it didn't matter i just wanted to get her to breathe again so i picked her up in the back of the car while jennifer my wife is  flying over to to the to the closest hospital and there i am giving my daughter rescue breaths this was before cannabis and in that moment you know she came back i knew from that moment that we were going to have to do something different than what the doctors were telling us to do and we did and it worked and you're a trained health care professional you're a surgical technician and i am and you're up to date on safety or and all that and yet it 's such a challenge for you to it's different when you're dealing with your own family so that it's much more difficult when you don't have that professional distance i think and  rescheduled you have various activities to continue to reform marijuana laws in new jersey tell us what you're doing in what will tell us what you're doing about that well there's a few things that we're working on right now and we're always doing something i think that  it's important that you know us having this knowledge that we pass it on to other people because the research is so limited and so what we want to do is make it easily double to not only people that can afford the program such as you know our family can but also those of lower income so what we're working on right now in camden new jersey which is where i'm originally from we're working on a decriminalization resolution there and what this would do is this is stead of throwing people in jail for small amounts of cannabis they would actually receive a ticket at worse and maybe possibly just watch a video about you know cannabis it's a lot better than throwing someone in jail and giving them a misdemeanor and possibly destroying their you know their lives all around i mean when you catch a schedule one drug charge even if it's a misdemeanor you lose out on many benefits like housing you lose on job opportunity you lose out on just a lot of advantages that others have because you get caught with a small small amount of marijuana so what we're trying to do actually spending four million dollars arresting their own citizens which is a complete waste of time money and also police resources the second you slap them someone in in camden it's twelve hundred dollars the fine for possession of cannabis isn't even a five hundred dollars so right there you're wasting money and then on top of that you're taking a police officer off the street that could fight and we know how bad and can be with the violence now you're taking a police officer out of the street in order to process someone that isn't hurting anybody and in my eyes not really committing a crime that's one thing we're working on and that's from march fourteenth which is a big day we fuentes as we continue to move forward a city councilman into flint this for allowing us to actually show city council how much money is being wasted and you know just just supporting what it is that we're doing city council and can the news could be a tough sell i remember when i testified in camden at city council in city hall trying to get the alternative trying to get alternative treatment center site it down there and candid and to my real surprise they said they turned it down they said no we think that you know this is going to bring drugs in the camden well i mean i couldn't believe what they said they have methadone clinics in camden i mean we know that you know cannabis has been used to fight opioid abuse it would have been more sensible to you know the residents and the citizens of camden but unfortunately them work that way because it was so early on in the program i do know that you know city council isn't in for support but if you show them that there's some kind of economic advantage that they can have i mean it's one of the poorest cities in the country and you know they're going to take advantage of whatever economic opportunities come their way and that's why i think that this this this resolution might have a good chance and it's good that you're working with them you know we we introduced a resolution in support of legalization in trenton city council but you know they don't even take that up but you really need to establish a good working relationship i think with the council members and the mayor you know in order to have success for you know and as as you say there are there are changing attitudes you know people are moved in a way i think from the the reflex kind of reefer madness and the propaganda that the federal government's been putting out for decades and they're really starting to understand the benefits of marijuana and the  harms that as you point out these arrests it's not just the criminal record that follows you for the rest here of life but it's the civil penalties you know the the you can be front out of public housing and lose your job you lose all kinds of job opportunities you know you lose your driver's license even if you got if you weren't driving a car when you were found with the marijuana you know you can lose parental rights it's you know the civil rights can be more devastating you can  lose student loans you can you know they can really be more devastating to an individual into a community and even the criminal penalties when we were there a city council at the city council meeting all you heard from the residents with one of them complaining about the police there in camden this is an opportunity now for those stores relationships between police and the residents to actually improve if they were to pass a bill similar to a resolution so similar to what philadelphia did and i honestly believe that they can make this happen what it actually affects how the police work or is it is that symbolic resolution ricardo is it would actually say that that you're giving out tickets now instead of arresting people yeah for possession of marijuana yet you would just get it you would get a ticket and he would also be able to keep the cannabis that you were caught with you know so i mean what would be the point of them taking it away from you cannabis has some sort of a relationship to being able to cure my daughter's disease and that may sound a little radical but if you think about it my daughter was on twenty five different combinations years of drugs pharmaceutical drugs none of them really worked to help control her seizures none of them i mean that's a lot of medications for a seven year old to be taking in my very own kitchen i was able to decrease my daughter seizures by ninety percent could you imagine if someone such as yourself as a registered nurse or maybe even a scientist researcher or a doctor had this unlimited amounts of research that they could do i firmly believe that if they can cure my daughter's disease they can cure someone else's in the near future with the research you know and schedule two would make it easier to research marijuana but you're talking about schedule two in new jersey you know the ironic thing is that we have a medical marijuana program that recognizes marijuana for a number of different conditions as a safe and effective treatment but we also have you know the attorney general in new jersey says that marijuana is a schedule one drug with no exception medical uses in the united states it really makes no difference it really is up to the legislature i'm so glad you're pursuing this record of it really because you know the fallback we we asked the department of to reschedule we asked the we asked the director of the consumer of division of fare of affairs and director of consumer consumer affairs who has the power to reschedule marijuana in new jersey and he refused to do that and he said no it's up to the legislature to do it so i'm so glad to hear that you're taking it up with your legislator again it was early on when you guys did that so i think now as we all continue to work together on this and this will be really important for you as a registered nurse to also get involved and i firmly believe that if we were to move forward with  state legislature and show them you know it's not only my daughter but there's tons of different examples on how this is really medication that we do have a shot of making this a schedule two and i know there's many people that are against that even here in new jersey but if you think about it you have to come to some sort of a compromise you can't just say let's just to schedule it all together unfortunately i'm number one to discuss will of course i would love to discuss but i know that the reality of that happening is almost nothing yes great great i look forward to helping you in any way i can and you were also part of the hearings part of the hearings too in the public hearing recently on february twenty second the panel  that was appointed by the department of health the medicinal marijuana review panel by physicians to pharmacists and one registered nurse are currently evaluating petitions to add qualifying conditions to the medicinal marijuana deal but the reason why i showed up there is that it wasn't for my daughter that day my daughters do an excellent right now of course we would like more access and better products for my daughter but that day was actually for my sister my sister passed away back in august fifth of two thousand and fifteen from a heroin overdose she was only thirty two years old that had been her fourth overdose when she finally passed away she began taking opioids the age of  fast forward on her third overdose she overdosed on heroin and that i had asked her you know she survived that time as well and every forty seconds somebody is arrested or why are you doing this you know you know our famil not you know none of us in our family have ever done that we grew up in a community where heroin was rampant even before it was an epidemic considered an epidemic so we see we seen it firsthand i've seen people shoot up on our stoop walking up i've seen people drop on the street you know where i live that kids you know that i went to school with their parents had passed away from heroin overdoses back in the ninety's so we've seen it firsthand but she took her response to me was it helps take away the pain and you know she she that's all she could respond to me and you know it was better than prescription drugs and so she would again overdose august first  but before that overdose i had recommended to her taking some c b d oil because i had heard many opioid addicts that were actually using c b d and t h c is well i hope plant medicine to actually help fight their addiction and some of them were successful some of them were my sister did in fact try it i did make the oil for her she had obtained some some c b d flour and she asked me if i could help her make it i told i would i made a four and that that same day she was going to withdraw but she didn't want to go out and use i'm right there pretty much within forty five minutes you could see you know the cold sweats go away you can see that the chills dissipate a little bit now although it is added a little it did work for her so i know that it can work for many others and opioid abuse or addiction is not on the list of conditions and we put i i'm very sorry for your sister i'm very sorry for your loss and it's very sorry that for camp and you know it is such a it's such a difficult place to live and grow up and to to be surrounded by such poverty and violence in the city and but here your sister had a medical condition when she was she was a child and that's that's how it started you know trying to just control the pain  and you know the surgery only feet can be terribly painful and you're walking on and it's just it can be torturous so i certainly understand that kind of pain you know the need to relieve that kind of pain it's a shame that she didn't have 's addictive drugs that he uses the withdrawal symptoms so you know there certainly is a great deal of evidence for that and we and it's a shame your sister didn't you know rather than just having you know one time or a couple of times access to it consistent and reliable access to the kind of marijuana that would have really helped her you know with her addiction and so this is what we're working for now to try to make this available to other people and we certainly hope that this review panel will look favorably use disorder as a qualifying condition from our one therapy in new jersey and so thank you so much for what you were doing for that and for telling the story which i'm sure is painful for you to relate to that is you know last you know costly to relive it but you know the fact is that if i don't constantly relive it someone else will and you know if there's something that i feel that my sister could have done is maybe help add this condition in you know and you know forever you know sort of set you know a mark on on this because i mean this is really an epidemic it's been an epidemic for a long long time but it's now traveled out and it's had a lot more people than it's ever have and i think that you know it's our responsibility to spread that knowledge there's a lot of people that aren't aware that can happen  actually help with opioid abuse you know and of course now we do have a we do have hope that marijuana will be actually legalized in new jersey in two thousand and eighteen what are your thoughts on that  certainly to me it would make it would change it from a more or less a prescription drug what we have now even though it's not technically a prescription drug but you can only get up to two ounces a month by seeing a doctor change that from the current status to more like an over the counter drug or any adult could go into a store and buy one are you working towards that is well over a quarter i am i i think it's great i think that you know moving forward with legalization is great but we have to keep in mind though that the patients have to come first we're going to make so much money off taxes by taxing the recreational side that i think that it would only be fair to lift the tax off of off of the patients a majority of these  you know we were able to speak in front of i think was like twenty thousand people or something and that's what we were able to raise a lot of awareness that's what we've really been you know pushing is just awareness because there's still a lot of people out there that aren't aware that we even have a program in the state of new jersey or that their children seizures could be you know suppressed with cannabis there's still a lot of people out there so we're we're doing our best to raise the