Mother Forced Into Giving Child in Remission Chemotherapy -

A Colorado mother says she was only trying to help her young son battle cancer. Now she says a doctor turned her into the state because she is refusing chemotherapy treatments for her child, and is instead using a product related to marijuana. A petition on change.org calls on the governor, the Colorado Springs police, Department of Human Services, and The Children’s Hospital to recognize cannabis as a treatment for cancer. The mother did not start it, but signed it after she and her child moved to Colorado Springs to take advantage of the state’s marijuana laws.

Landon Riddle was 3 years old when says he was diagnosed with leukemia. After being given just days to live he was placed on chemotherapy and radiation treatments. His mother, Sierra Riddle, says the treatments helped reduce the tumors but made her son very sick, including night terrors. The chemotherapy was stopped and Landon was given cannabis oil capsules, as she told CNN.

“I am willing to do whatever I have to do to make sure my child gets to live another day and gets to have that relief and have that quality of life he deserves,” Sierra Riddle said

Landon now looks healthier and is feeling much better, but in a letter posted online Sierra wrote, “They want to take away my son because I am refusing chemo!”

That came after she saw a Colorado doctor the day before, adding, “They do not see cannabis as a treatment for cancer. The oil is a concentrate from the marijuana plant which does not include the psychoactive ingredient THC. “Cannabis, just like morphine, is a medication,” Sierra Riddle said. “It’s not just a drug, it’s a medication, and it’s a medication that helps my son to fight his cancer.”

CBS4 Investigator Rick Sallinger attempted to reach the Colorado doctor and center which saw the child. Sallinger wanted to ask about the mother’s statement that law enforcement authorities would be contacted if chemotherapy is not continued. So far he hasn’t gotten a response.

Six years ago, 3-year-old Landon Riddle was diagnosed with leukemia. Under doctors’ orders, his mother Sierra Riddle began treatment for her young son: aggressive chemotherapy and radiation.

But while still living in Utah, Sierra watched her little boy become violently ill from the chemotherapy — Landon suffered nerve-damage in his legs, nausea that led to vomiting dozens of times a day, intense pain and at one point went 25 days without eating following the treatment, according to CNN.

“Around the clock, he was usually on liquid morphine, Ativan, Promethexane,” Sierra told CNN back in July. “And it just really didn’t seem to be helping.”

Feeling like her family “didn’t have anything left to lose” she looked into medical marijuana treatment. She moved her family to Colorado Springs, Colo. to benefit from the state’s marijuana laws and started to give Landon liquid forms of both Cannabidiol, or CBD, and Tetrahydrocannabinol, also known as THC.

“Within four weeks we could see the improvement,” Sierra told KRDO.

Users of medical marijuana have said that THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that is associated with the “high” sensation, can also be an effective painkiller as well as inhibit feelings of nausea.

And research from a pair of scientists at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco suggests that CBD, the non-toxic, non-psychoactive compound found in the cannabis plant, could actually stop metastasis in many kinds of aggressive cancer.

Sierra swapped chemotherapy for cannabis therapy and has seen her son return to his old energetic self and his cancer go into remission. Her decision to use medical marijuana as treatment for her son’s cancer has raised some eyebrows in the traditional medical community — so much so, that one Colorado doctor reported Sierra to Human Services for refusing chemotherapy for Landon.

“They are not only forcing me to do something against my will as a parent, they are forcing me to make my child sick,” Riddle said to CBS4.

Without an oncologist to testify in court that there are other options to treat cancer besides chemo, we will lose. Our attorney stated it, other doctors have stated it, end of story. We have no choice but to put Landon through more chemo until we can find an oncologist that is brave enough to stand up for what is right for compassionate care for all children with cancer.

To put a child through more chemo who is in remission is insane. It is child abuse. The utter arrogance and lack of humanity shown towards this child and his parents by this doctor and the CPS minions who backed him is shocking. All the more reason to change this horrendous system of no checks and balances giving other people the power to make medical decisions for your children. That should scare every single parent in America to the point they are in the streets DEMANDING change, not asking.