Advertisement Dad: Nevada County medical marijuana laws risk son's life Opponents claim marijuana growers are using boy Share Shares Copy Link Copy

New Nevada County laws limiting where you can grow medical marijuana, and how much of it, are throwing a couple into a panic -- the pair’s son relies on the medicine to survive.Ever since he was 4 years old, Penn Valley’s Silas Hurd has suffered from seizures.His father Forrest Hurd said Silas’ condition is known as childhood epilepsy because the children diagnosed with it hardly survive into adulthood.The number of seizures reaches hundreds per month; during the worst, Silas suffered more than 700.“ start to deteriorate mentally, they start to deteriorate physically,” Hurd said. “Silas was losing his ability to put sentences together, understand what we were saying.”In their desperate search for a cure, Silas’ parents stumbled across an oil made from cannabis plants.Once they began treating then 7-year-old Silas with it, he went four months without a seizure. He’s now 8 years old, and his seizures are down 90 percent from their peak.“To have to accept as parents that we’re going to have to watch our child slowly seize to death, and then find something that worked, it was like magic -- it was a miracle,” Hurd said. “It was one of the most amazing things we’d come across.”Now that magic medicine is going away.In January, the Nevada County Board of Supervisors voted to ban outdoor medical marijuana grows and limit indoor grows to just 12 plants.The strain of cannabis Silas relies on isn’t sold in medical marijuana co-ops. Instead, it is cultivated locally, outdoors and in large numbers in order to harvest a useable amount.“ very rare, and you have to grow a lot of them in order to get enough to make these reductions,” Hurd said.Now, the county wants to put the ordinance up to the voters on the June ballot.In an email supporting the decision, the Nevada County Republican Party Chairwoman Deborah Wilder wrote, “The commercial growers are using an unfortunate child as a publicity stunt . . .”A week after sending out the email, Wilder stands by her words.“It’s a bad thing that the growers are basically exploiting this unfortunate child’s circumstances as if that’s an excuse -- as for why the commercial growers need to have more outdoor grows,” Wilder said.Hurd takes exception to his child being labeled as “unfortunate.”“Personally, it’s hurtful, he’s not an unfortunate child,” Hurd said. “He’s a child with a very rare condition.”Meantime, outdoor marijuana cultivation in Nevada County has come to a halt. Meaning, Silas only has four months’ worth of medicine left.Hurd filed a writ challenging several parts of the ballot measure, known as Measure W. He's also filed a temporary restraining order to block the ballots from being printed.The restraining order request will be heard in Nevada County Superior Court Friday.