A 12-year-old girl in Colorado is suing Attorney General Jeff Sessions over what the lawsuit claims is an unconstitutional federal prohibition on medical marijuana.
Alexis Bortell, who uses a strain of cannabis oil called Haleigh’s Hope to keep seizures at bay, told Fox 31 in Denver that she hopes the lawsuit will at least normalize medical marijuana. Her best hope, she said, is that it will legalize it nationwide.
Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I drug — the same classification as heroin, and considered more dangerous than substances like cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl, an often-deadly synthetic opioid.
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But Bortell and others contend that marijuana does, in fact, carry some medical benefits, and that the current federal prohibition ignores people that have been helped by the drug.
According to Fox 31, Bortell and her family moved to Colorado to be able to legally obtain cannabis oil to treat her epilepsy. Doctors in her home state of Texas had discussed the possibility of brain surgery for the young girl.
“I’d say it’s a lot better than brain surgery,” Bortell told the news station.
Medical marijuana has so far been legalized in 29 states and Washington, D.C. While the substance is still prohibited at the federal level, certain protections prevent the Justice Department from using federal funds to prosecute medical marijuana users in states where the substance is legal.
But Sessions has indicated a harder line on marijuana, and has been outspoken against the use of the substance.