Mark Slaugh, membership director of the Colorado Springs Medical Cannabis Council, Tuesday wrote to Rep. Mark Barker, R-Colorado Springs, and Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs to urge legislative action on behalf of a teenage medical marijuana patient being denied access to his medicine by Harrison School District 2.

“It is a tragedy that the district feels it needs to follow the law so closely, but even so, there is nothing in the law about internal possession,” he said.

He said the family reached out to his organization seeking help. “We’re just trying to assist so that he has a voice.”

The teenager in question was diagnosed a little more than a year ago with a very rare condition that causes seizures, which can last for days. He missed about a year of school and was in and out of hospitals, where he was administered morphine and other narcotics to control the seizures. Those drugs didn’t work very well and involved a host of side effects. Finally, he tried medical marijuana in lozenge form, and it turned out to work better than any of the other drugs. Shortly after starting on medical marijuana, he was ready to go back to school and resume a normal life. His school district has made that more than a little difficult. Links to past articles are below.

Last night, this story made for a few minutes of good television in the boy’s hometown Colorado Springs, where district officials said the story is not a story.

“All my friends are getting their education and growing up to be something, and I felt like I wasn’t going to amount to anything,” the student told the Fox 21 reporter.

Slaugh said the problem is two-fold. First, the district should take a more reasonable approach to the situation and, second, the legislature should rewrite medical marijuana laws so that this situation doesn’t come up in the first place.

“The district should take a logical approach, a human approach so that this kid does not have to suffer through convulsions at school. He shouldn’t have had to suffer by changing schools and losing all of his friends. He shouldn’t have to suffer by having to walk home to get his medicine, and he shouldn’t have to suffer by not being able to return to school once he has had his medicine,” Slaugh said.

At the same time, he said the state legislature should rewrite medical marijuana laws so that a student who needs the medicine can more easily attend school.

“The district needs to ask itself, ‘what are we doing to cause a child to suffer? Why are we doing that?”

“People are afraid to tackle the issue of teenagers and medical marijuana use,” he told the Colorado Independent this afternoon.

Neither Barker nor Morse could be reached today.

Excerpts from his letter are below: