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Why I GIve My 9-year-old PotMy son J has autism. He’s also had two serious surgeries for a spinal cord tumor and has an inflammatory bowel condition, all of which may be causing him pain, if he could tell us. He can say words, but many of them—”duck in the water, duck in the water”—don’t convey what he means.

For a time, anti-inflammatory medication seemed to control his pain. But in the last year, it stopped working. He began to bite and to smack the glasses off my face. If you were in that much pain, you’d probably want to hit someone, too.

J’s school called my husband and me in for a meeting about J’s tantrums, which were affecting his ability to learn. The teachers were wearing tae kwon do arm pads to protect themselves against his biting. Their solution was to hand us a list of child psychiatrists. Since autistic children like J can’t exactly do talk therapy, this meant sedating, antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal—Thorazine for kids.

Last year, Risperdal was prescribed for more than 389,000 children—240,000 of them under the

the dosage, J began garnering a few glowing school reports: “J was a pleasure have in speech class,” instead of “J had 300 aggressions today.” But J tends to build tolerance to synthetics, and in a few months, we could see the aggressive behavior coming back. One night, I went to the meeting of a medical marijuana patient advocacy group on the campus of the college where I teach. The patients told me that Marinol couldn’t compare to marijuana, the plant, which has at least 60 cannabinoids to Marinol’s one.

Courtesy of Rick SimpsonPhoenix Tears

age of 12—for bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, and other disorders. Yet the drug has never been tested for long-term safety in children and carries a severe warning of side effects. From 2000 to 2004, 45 pediatric deaths were attributed to Risperdal and five other popular drugs also classified as “atypical antipsychotics,” according to a review of FDA data by USA Today.

When I canvassed parents of autistic children who take Risperdal, I didn’t hear a single story of an improvement that seemed worth the risks.

A 2002 study specifically looking at the use of Risperdal for autism, in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed moderate improvements in “autistic irritation”—but if you read more closely, the study followed only 49 children over eight weeks, which, researchers admitted, “limits inferences about adverse effects.”We met with J’s doctor, who’d read the studies and agreed: No Risperdal or its kin.

The school called us in again. What were we going to do, they asked. As a sometimes health writer and blogger, I was intrigued when a homeopath suggested medical marijuana.

Cannabis has long-documented effects as an analgesic and an anxiety modulator. Best of all, it is safe. The homeopath referred me to a publication by the Autism Research Institute describing cases of reduced aggression, with no permanent side effects. Rats given 40 times the psychoactive level merely fall sleep. Dr. Lester Grinspoon, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has been researching cannabis for 40 years, says he has yet to encounter a case of marijuana causing a death, even from lung cancer. A prescription drug called Marinol, which contains a synthetic cannabinoid, seemed mainstream enough to bring up with J’s doctor. I cannot say that with a few little pills, everything turned around. But after about a week of playing around with

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Quasar the first non autoflowering strain by Buddha Seeds...After several successes with autoflowering varieties, this veteran Spanish seed bank releases its first non autoflowering strain, Quasar!

Buddha Seeds made its debut 5 years ago with White Dwarf, the first

autoflowering variety bred in Spain. It has quickly become one of the favourite strains for growers with limited space. Then they released Red Dwarf, smaller and even faster, and recently they amazed us with Deimos, an autoflowering version of Northern Lights.

Quasar is an indica/sativa hybrid with a relatively short flowering time. This feature, coupled with its reduced internodal segments, makes Quasar a highly suitable choice for indoor growing. Having a short blooming time is an important issue and is one of the key factors in getting the genetics spot on. All varieties are fast blooming indoor and outdoor.

Quasar yielded excellent results from guerrilla gardening around the Mediterranean. It was the strain that had the best resistance to extreme heat and lack of water, completely reaching ripeness the first week of October, when the first cold nights came along.

The first astounding feature of Quasar is the hardiness of its growth. Its thick branches and nodes are perfect to withstand the weight of the heavy buds. As mentioned above, its appearance is sativa-like with large leaves and sturdy branches. Incredible buds develop in big fir-shaped bunches, with a complex scent. Its effects are strongly that of a sativa: clear, creative and active, perfectly suited to smoking during the day.

It is better to avoid high levels of Nitrogen when cultivating, so it is recommended to gently fertilise during the growth period, for instance with vermicompost. Despite that, it is an easy plant to grow, resistant to insects and fungi attacks.

It’s a vigorous and fast growing plant, only needing a short time for growth indoor. If you need to be discrete, it is better to prune the top so you can control its height providing that it receives good lighting. This ensures that the plant does not just shoot up.

Its appearance and effects are mainly sativa, also the smell, someone said it has the scent of sandalwood tea. This makes Quasar something completely new, with very short flowering periods and dense buds (an inheritance of its indica side).

It’s a very carefully worked out strain, developed over many years. Proof of that is the huge amount of reports, made by beta-testers, year after year in order to find that perfectly balanced hybrid. The results of these tests can be easily found on the internet.

Quasar is bound to become one of the most widely desired hybrids for indoor and outdoor growers, because of its robustness, short flowering time and its powerful stoning effects.

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