Enedina Stanger, with her children Elena and Eva, speaks during a press conference announcing a new patient initiative in support of legalizing medical cannabis at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016. Stanger has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. (Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News)
At the news conference, Libertas Institute president Connor Boyack and Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill urged lawmakers to come up with a medical marijuana program. Gill said medical marijuana legalization is part of a wider rethinking of a criminal justice system that has often punished people for mental illness or other health issues.
He pointed to Enedina Stanger, a Utah mom who was booked into jail for smoking marijuana to fight the nerve pain from advanced Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. She was later charged with third-degree endangerment of a child. “These are not the people I want to be prosecuting,” Gill said.