Meet families for whom the fight for medical marijuana has very real consequences

Lawrence Jones filled in for Dana Loesch Thursday night on "Dana" and interviewed Eric Espinoza and Mark and Christy Zartler, three people directly affected by the fight to legalize marijuana. Jones conducted an investigation earlier this week, interviewing families facing harrowing challenges who found relief only through medical marijuana.

Espinoza, 33, suffers from cerebral palsy and claims the only respite he can find in the struggle against his disease is through the use of medical marijuana. He was joined by the Zartler family, whose daughter, Kara, suffers with severe autism and soothes herself with self-harming behavior. Both Espinoza and the Zartlers have exhausted channels of traditional medications and treatments and have found results only with medical marijuana.

"We just think about it as if she disappears from us for a while," said Kara's father, Mark Zartler. "Cannibis fixed them. We can administer that, and then she's back to normal."

Espinoza undergoes a rigorous workout schedule which then requires extensive recovery time in order to delay the effects of the disease as long as possible. Having experienced such challenges, he wants to be a voice to others, like the Zartlers, who have no voice.

"I can't stop," Espinoza said when asked why he fights so hard. "Once I know that there are families like the Zartlers, patients out there like Kara who don't have a voice, quite literally, it's therefore my responsibility to give her the voice, to give the experience that I've gathered to her family and to anybody else ... so that they can see that there is a choice to change their life and that there are people out there that can help them do that."

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