Oklahoma Veteran Faces Life In Prison For Treating PTSD With Marijuana [View all]

http://www.mintpressnews.com/oklahoma-veteran-with-ptsd-faces-life-in-prison-for-treating-ptsd-with-marijuana/207335/



After legally travelling to California on bail, the veteran was apprehended at gunpoint in a surprise raid at his childrens’ pre-school.

Oklahoma Veteran Faces Life In Prison For Treating PTSD With Marijuana
By MintPress News Desk | July 8, 2015

GERONIMO, OK –— A veteran of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now faces life in prison for his attempts to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder with medical marijuana. His wife is pleading with the courts and media for leniency, fearing incarceration will take a father away from his children.

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Kristoffer Lewandowski served three tours of duty, including service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like at least 13% of Gulf War war veterans, Lewandowski suffers from PTSD and, also like many other veterans, he’s used medical marijuana to alleviate his symptoms. But Oklahoma, where he originally lived with his wife Whitney and three children, has some of the harshest penalties for cannabis in the United States, and only legally protects limited use of CBD oil for medical purposes.

The Lewandowski’s problems began in June of last year, when police were called to deal with an apparent domestic dispute that resulted from a flare up of his PTSD symptoms. When a search of his home turned up six marijuana plants, police and the local media treated it as a major bust.

~snip~

According to his wife, Kristoffer Lewandowski has never been offered domestic violence treatment or even drug rehabilitation by the state, but only jail time and a potential lifetime prison sentence. He sought out cannabis as a way to cut back on his ingestion of pharmaceutical drugs. “He was taking 13 pills a day, and it was just killing his liver. He was having all these issues with his body and he just wanted to try something more natural to just see if he could do without that many pills a day,” she said.