More of These, Please: Cannabis Folk Pass the Hat for Sick Child

A serendipitous meeting at a lemonade stand outside a Canadian cannabis conference led to an old-style passing the hat for a child with a rare disease, and more than $7,000 to assist with her treatment.

An attendee of the Cannabis Life Conference introduced event MC Craig Ex to a young girl named Jayda, who was selling lemonade outside the conference. Jayda has an extremely rare brain condition, and her mom needs to raise money for treatments and a new vehicle suitable for her daughter's condition. Coincidentally, the next speaker was Tracy Ryan, whose own daughter's medical challenges had led her to launch CannaKids.

Recognizing this magic moment, Ex realized "‘I’ve got a room full of people with money, and a microphone,’ and the wheels started turning.” and went to work.

Before long, there was $1,600 in the cup, and three medical cannabis organizations (The Medical Cannabis Dispensary (owned by activist Dana Larsen), Topleaf Canada, and conference organizer Cambridge House International had stepped up to match. A GoFundMe page has also raised $400 for a grand total of $7,000.

That's in addition to services and product offered by attendees. According to MC-Ex, "“David Hutchinson, Dave Hepburn, Mara Gordon, Tracy Ryan, and Nettie Green all offered her all the consultations and all the support she needs, and then Green Island Naturals stepped in and offered her all the products she and her mom might need, because mom’s got some pretty crazy anxiety, too,” Ex said.

Dear readers, Amanda Siebert wrote this story, spending the time needed to craft the story beautifully, taking extra time to include a bunch of links. We found it in Georgia Straight. And now we've chased it down and included all the links here, plus a few more for good measure (Go Tracy!)

For our part, this story touched us and we were happy to go the distance. We hope stories cannabis community stories like this one will continue to rise to the top of news feeds around the world.