Stoned at Eight, Fighting Cancer

Mykayla Comstock is eight years old, from Oregon, and has leukemia. She also consumes more marijuana than most adults I know. Vice produced a documentary called Stoned Kids following her, and the premise is exactly what it sounds like: a child with blood cancer whose family decided that cannabis isn’t just a painkiller but possibly, genuinely, a cure—and so they’re administering it in as high a concentration as they can manage.

Maybe they’re right. There’s research—contested, preliminary, but real—suggesting cannabinoids can inhibit tumor growth in certain cancers. And there’s the simpler, less controversial reality that a kid going through leukemia treatment is in serious pain, and cannabis helps with pain. Mykayla’s family is doing both at once: managing her suffering and betting on the bigger claim simultaneously.

Fuck cancer. If there’s even a partial chance that this keeps that kid alive, I want every oncologist in America to watch this and take notes.