Six-hour seminar on medical marijuana set for Modesto on Thursday

An educational seminar on medical marijuana, first held with five panelists over two hours last year in Modesto, returns Thursday at three times the size.

The Awaken America 2015 Cannabis Conference will be held at Modesto Centre Plaza with two-hour sessions at 10 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. The 14 scheduled panelists include patients, health care professionals and caregivers.

The free event is presented by Ripon-based 420 InSight, a medical marijuana advocacy group. Founder and CEO Rudy Roma’s daughter, Ralina, born in 1984, died just 15 months later of acute lymphoblastic leukemia after undergoing radiation and chemotherapy.

Some years later, he said, he encountered two young girls who were in remission from cancer and were being treated with cannabis oil. Pent-up feelings about the loss of his daughter – “‘What if ?’ was always in the back of my mind” – surfaced and he dove into research about medical marijuana.

Roma, who worked for Modesto’s Sylvan Union School District for a couple of years, was a behavior specialist paraprofessional helping children with autism and other conditions. He said he met parents who were finding success with marijuana as an autism treatment.

He got his own medical marijuana card about a year and a half ago to treat a disorder that includes mild obsessive compulsive disorder and ADD, he said. Roma said his health has improved, including an 85-pound weight loss.

Now, through 420 InSight and the Awaken America seminars, he said his aim is to raise awareness of the applications of medical marijuana. Lack of knowledge can be as basic as how to obtain medical pot and the different methods of taking it, he said. Many potential patients don’t explore it simply because they think the only option is smoking it. But it also can be used in vaporizers, edible forms, tinctures, tonics, topicals, even teas, he said.

420 InSight also is working to develop an online network in which patients can share what’s worked for them and what hasn’t and rate that success on a scale of one to 10, Roma said.

In a news release about Thursday’s event, Roma said, “Awaken America is about parents with children with seizures that respond only to nonpsychoactive tinctures, veterans with PTSD who reject recreational pot but cannot sleep through the night without cannabis, athletes, mothers and fathers, the elderly and the grievously injured able to stop taking addictive, debilitating pain medications because of cannabis.

“Awaken America is about the doctors and caregivers and cultivators and distributors and manufacturers who are committed to doing their part to provide the same level of care to cannabis patients that patients not using cannabis are receiving from the health care system, in many instances putting themselves in legal jeopardy to fulfill their oaths and personal moral obligations.”

Session 1 of the seminar, “Patients with Qualifying Conditions,” includes five people with personal experience using medical marijuana to treat epilepsy, autism, PTSD and more.

Session 2, “Health Professionals with Rx Pads,” includes a retired vascular surgeon and three others in the fields of pain management, naturopathy and chiropractic.

Session 3, “Health Professionals Who Deliver Care,” features five panelists including Jason David, a Modesto resident who gives his son a nonpsychoactive form of medical marijuana to treat a seizure disorder.

Seating for Thursday’s event is 200, Roma said, and about 75 percent of the space had been reserved as of Wednesday morning. To register for free tickets, go to www.eventbrite.com/o/8384782479. He expects that there will be room for attendees who simply show up at the door.

The seminar will be streamed live Thursday at www.live.420insight.com. Within a couple of weeks, Roma also plans to set an Awaken America seminar in Sacramento.

This story was originally published September 9, 2015 at 10:19 AM with the headline "Six-hour seminar on medical marijuana set for Modesto on Thursday."