Reports of parents treating their autistic children with marijuana may be shocking to the medical community, but apparently it works. Mieko Hester-Perez's 10-year-old son Joey (below, left) was just 46 pounds and wasting away before she started feeding him small doses of marijuana-iinfused brownies. He's gained weight and is behaving better, prompting Hester-Perez (left) to crow, "The marijuana has balanced my son."

The same goes for Sam (right), the 10-year son of Angela and Steve, who like the Perezes live in California where medical marijuana is legal. Steve grows pot and makes hash from his plants. He gives Sam a small chunk of hash each day.

"His pent-up rage and his obsessiveness just went away," says Steve. "It just calmed him down. It gave us the results we were looking for."

Most parents give their autistic children pharmaceutical drugs like Risperdal. Seeking an alternative, Hester-Perez, who says she's never smoked marijuana, found pot was the solution to Joey's weight loss and aggressiveness.

"My son had self-injurious behaviors," she explains. "He was a danger to himself and others. You could see the bones in his chest. He was going to die."

That's before she started medicating him with the brownies.

"Within hours, he requested foods we had never seen him eat before," Hester-Perez says. "I saved my son's life, and marijuana saved my son's life. When a mother hears that her son is knocking on death's door, you will do anything to save his life."

Becky Estepp, spokeswoman for Talk About Curing Autism, speculates about the unusual approach employed by Hester-Perez and Sam's parents: "If medical marijuana calms down some children with autism, it may work in the same way that massage or swinging therapies do. These things feel good and that could have a settling effect on kids that are prone to be hyperactive."

Even TV personality Dr. Drew Pinsky supports the parents' decisions.

"The idea that somehow cannabis is a 'bad' drug and there are 'good' drugs, that's a huge mistake," he says. "There are drugs that have liabilities and used properly can really help people. This is a clear situation where it's helping a kid. Why shouldn't they use it?"


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