Can experimental mariuana treatments save a young boy's life? A three-part series in the Sacramento Bee tells the story of Silas Hurd, a nine-year-old boy living with his family in Penn Valley, California. Silas suffers from a rare and life-threatening form of epilepsy that was causing him to have hundreds of seizures a month. Those seizures and what they did to their son set the Hurd family on a years-long journey to find a cure.
Turning to a community of marijuana growers in rural Nevada County who took up Silas' cause as part of an on-going experiment, Silas finally found some relief through the use of special marijuana tinctures. But that has now put them on the front lines of a county fight over its marijuana use. (Measure W which would outright ban any outdoor growing operations.) Today on Insight, we'll talk with senior writer Peter Hecht. Hecht has been covering marijuana in California since voters passed Prop. 215, which allowed for the legal use of weed for medicine.