Shona Banda Faces Three Decades in Prison for Medical Marijuana

Kansas woman turns herself in, had been self-medicating with medi-weed for Crohn’s disease

Shona Banda, like many others, tried medical Cannabis after dealing with the symptoms of Crohn's disease for some time. She told RawStory, "I'm not in my deathbed; I'm working for the first time in four years, I'm hiking, I'm swimming, I'm able to play with my kids, I'm able to do things - I love it."

Despite living in an anti-pot state like Kansas, Banda lent her story to the Rick Simpson hash oil documentary, Run from the Cure, in addition to penning a memoir detailing her pro-pot experiences, entitled Live Free or Die: Reclaim Your Life... Reclaim Your Country!

Not everyone can afford to move to states with legal Cannabis laws, especially large families. Unfortunately, Shona Banda became a member of a growing category of people - those who desperately require the therapy provided by certain medical marijuana products but become victims to the rather draconian anti-pot laws that counter the blissful legalization progress enjoyed by other states. More specifically, Banda became the woman who had her children taken away because one of them dared to speak up about the successful treatment his mother had experienced as a result of Cannabis oil therapy.

According to RawStory, after her son had witnessed her rapid recovery from Crohn's, drug education counselors had been "regurgitating refer madness propaganda to his peers" at school on the 24th of March. The boy recounted his mother's positive reaction to Cannabis oil therapy and thus began the legal trouble.

Banda's son, who had actually lived in Colorado at some previous time, was questioned about his mother's drug use by school administrators, who notified Child Protective Services. After Shona Banda lost custody of him, law enforcement was notified and a search warrant and subsequent raid of her home produced just over a pound of herbal Cannabis and oil-producing equipment, which the police report described as having been "within easy reach of the child."

The embattled mother, who turned herself in to police, posted a $50,000 bond with the help of funds gleaned from an account set up by others to aid her on crowd-sourcing website GoFundMe. Banda faces a maximum of thirty years of prison time and still has not regained custody of her son.