This Housewife May Be Latin America's First Legally Prescribed Marijuana Patient Simeon Tegel - VOXXI
go to original August 13, 2014

Chile’s health authorities are giving Cecilia Heyder special permission to use cannabis-derived Sativex to treat her cancer and lupus. (Facebook)

LIMA, Peru — “Out of 10, when I smoke the pain is four. When I don’t, it is 14,” says Cecilia Heyder, a Chilean housewife with breast cancer and lupus who is likely the first person to be legally prescribed medical marijuana in Latin America.

On June 26, Chile’s Institute for Public Health granted Heyder special permission, based on her unusual double illness, to be treated with Sativex, a cannabis-derived painkiller that will improve her quality of life — without getting her stoned.

The 48-year-old mother of two was diagnosed with systemic lupus in 2009 and then breast cancer in 2011. As the pain became unbearable, and on a doctor’s suggestion, she began using cannabis in early 2013.

With her first shipment of Sativex from the UK still weeks away, she now takes the soft drug through infusions, in food and by smoking joints.

None of that’s permitted by Chilean law, although possession of cannabis for personal use is not actually punished.

Before her illness, Heyder says, she had only ever tried the drug once, as a teenager, and did not enjoy the experience.

Her case appears to mark a watershed in a region where no nation, including Chile, yet has laws in effect that allow or regulate medical marijuana.

Read the rest at VOXXI

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