Michael Lambert’s four-year-old daughter Katelyn suffers from one of the most vicious forms of childhood epilepsy.
As an infant she would sometimes have more than 1,000 brain-damaging seizures a day — that’s one every 15 seconds.
When Katelyn reached six months of age, and it was clear regular treatments had failed her, Lambert turned to medical cannabis, which he said “saved her life.”
Before he began treating her with cannabis oil, she had a one in two chance of dying before she was 18 years old and a 100 per cent chance of intellectual disability.
“Katelyn is well. Every day without a seizure is a good day,” he told Mamamia.
Lambert has a Federal permit to import cannabis but under NSW law it is still illegal for him to possess it, he said.
Regardless, there is a law that allows NSW police to use their discretion when it comes to the drug.
Lambert's home-grown cannabis plant. Source: supplied
Rather than turning a blind eye, they have chosen to charge Lambert with a slew of offences under the under the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act for growing the plant in his backyard.
"Call them what you like — tattooed healers with tasers; underqualified neurologists with guns," he said, referring to the NSW police force.
"Whatever you call them, you can't call them qualified to come to the house of a catastrophic epileptic and demand her medicine, which her neurologist wants her to continue to take. "
Lambert plans to fight the charges in court and has already spent more than $30,000 on legal fees and medical reports — all because he wanted to ease his child's suffering.
