LINCOLN, Neb. (Nebraska Examiner) – At just 7 years old, Teddy Bronson of Omaha has faced six brain surgeries, been prescribed 14 different drugs and used about half a million dollars in medical hardware to fight his drug-resistant epilepsy that at one time had him enduring an average of 3,800 seizures each month.
Matt Bronson, a disabled U.S. Air Force veteran, and Liz Bronson, a nurse practitioner at Children’s Nebraska, say that each day is a fight for their “beautiful little son,” Teddy, including any measures possible to reduce his seizures. That included a groundbreaking half-day neurosurgery at Children’s just a few years ago with a robotic surgical assistant.
At a public forum this weekend for medical cannabis regulations, which the Bronsons say could help ease Teddy’s pain, Matt Bronson said his son is at 85% higher risk of losing his life each night. But each morning, Liz and Matt greet their son.
“I get to see my son smile, I get to hear him babble, and damn it, he is seven and a half years old and he’s walking,” Matt Bronson told an often raucous, cheering public forum crowd in Omaha on May 4. “Three years ago, he was in a wheelchair.”
Data shows Teddy is improving, “but any seizure can take him,” Liz Bronson said. Quoting the family’s California-based epileptologist, Liz Bronson said, “We can either pass evidence-based, well-regulated legislation, or we can sign more death certificates.”
“We come here before you today to say that, ‘I’m sorry, but Teddy matters,’ and that our family matters and that the suffering individuals in this state matter,” Liz Bronson said.
A continued fight
In a more than decade-long fight for medical cannabis in Nebraska, through three election cycles, numerous legislative bills and multiple court fights, the Bronsons are among those who have consistently fought for access to the medicine.
Voters overwhelmingly approved legalizing medical cannabis in November. It was approved by 71% of voters, and just a slightly smaller percentage, 68%, approved the basic outlines of a regulatory system.
The Bronsons were among hundreds of Nebraskans who attended public forums May 3 in La Vista, May 4 in Omaha or May 5 in Lincoln. Most shared a similar message: Medical cannabis is legal in Nebraska, and the “will of the voters” must be implemented.
But how the state should do so differed among the dozens of speakers who addressed a bipartisan group of 13 state senators spread between the three events on Legislative Bill 677, from State Sen. Ben Hansen of Blair, a bill meant to clarify regulations. Senators estimated at least 300 attendees.
Some speakers linked the fight with legislative efforts to water down minimum wage and paid sick leave protections passed in the 2022 and 2024 statewide elections.
Others linked LB 677 to LB 316, from State Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha, a priority of Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers, who has escalated his opposition to LB 677 and all products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. LB 316 essentially reclassifies “hemp” as “marijuana.” Opponents call it a “de facto ban” on nearly all THC or hemp products.
Hilgers said Wednesday that it was never his intention to use LB 316 against the ballot measures. Hansen is working to make explicit in Kauth’s bill that it does not conflict with the ballot measures or LB 677.
Hilgers said his “heart goes out” to anyone in pain who feels they can’t access something they feel could alleviate the hurt. However, he said he must uphold federal laws against marijuana despite dozens of states approving medical or recreational cannabis.
“I think two plus two is four, even if everyone else says two plus two is five,” Hilgers said this week when he launched a law enforcement campaign against LB 677.
Speakers at this month’s forums blasted LB 677 for its compromises, including prohibiting smoking cannabis, specifying 15 “qualifying conditions,” allowing no more than 30 medical dispensaries and requiring a patient or caregiver to pay up to $45 for a registry card under the new state regulatory system.
Among those was Ethan Stankus of Bellevue, who said that if he’d known there would be a smoking ban, conditions list or other “needless compromises,” he would have voted “nay.”
“This is not what we voted for,” Stankus said, holding up a breakdown of the amendment to LB 677, asking why Nebraskans needed to take time to reexplain their vote.
‘100% of the apple’
For Hansen and supporters, the need for the bill is complicated, illustrated, for instance, when many attendees criticized the regulations for being housed in a new Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission that shares resources and staff with the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission.
That was part of the ballot measure, partly in response to consistent opposition to medical cannabis from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. Across the dozens of speakers, only one, the state’s former longtime state epidemiologist in DHHS, Tom Safranek, raised hesitation about the voter-approved laws, for a “potential for societal damage.”
DHHS also opposes LB 677.
Due to constitutional constraints with ballot measures — including the need to stick to a “single subject” — supporters were limited in what they could present to voters. Supporters of LB 677 say it would provide clearer guidance before the commission acts.
The proposal also seeks to aid a voter-enacted deadline for the commission to write the regulations, which is currently July 1. The commission, in court filings, has said the ballot measure provided “no ability to carry out any duties” set forth in the new laws, particularly with its lack of funding.
State Sen. Rick Holdcroft of Bellevue, chair of the Legislature’s General Affairs Committee, who worked with Hansen on the bill, said Sunday there is “no way” the measure’s required regulations can be completed in time.
LB 677 seeks to delay the required regulations by three months, while also more explicitly setting the parameters of the new regulatory system. The voter-passed laws’ wide flexibility to let the commission draft all regulations could end up with a system stricter than LB 677 proposes.
For instance, one of the governor-appointed members, Lorelle Mueting of Omaha’s Heartland Family Service, said in an online comment against a separate LB 705 this year that her agency does not support legalizing marijuana “in any form for medical purposes” without federal approval.
Mueting opposed LB 677 at its hearing.
Hansen said the time is right “to get off our butts” and unite Democrats and Republicans and reach the 33-vote threshold needed to pass LB 677 and help Nebraskans.
The system needs to start right and show “the world hasn’t ended,” Hansen said. “Everyone’s not dying. People aren’t smoking doobies on the corner like a lot of my conservatives think.”
“We’re not going to eat 100% of the apple,” Hansen said Saturday of the efforts. “We get 75%, 80%, make sure the people who need it, you get it.”
‘Pigs must be flying’
Marcie Reed of Blair, one of Hansen’s constituents, spoke of her 12-year-old son Kyler, who has epilepsy and takes six medications a day. Since 2019, the family has prepared to use a rescue medication for Kyler, a controlled substance, if Kyler’s seizures last more than five minutes.
“You don’t ever get it until you’re in that situation,” Reed, who worked on the recent cannabis ballot measures, said. “One day, somebody you love might have epilepsy or cancer, and I think that if you truly think about it, you will realize you wish that you could have this to give to your loved one and not keep fighting for it.”
While tense at times, the weekend also brought moments of levity, such as Shannon Coryell of Omaha, a self-described “bleeding heart liberal” who said that “pigs must be flying” because she agreed with Hansen, a Republican with a Libertarian bent.
Tom Becka, a former host on conservative talk radio in Omaha and a longtime broadcaster, spoke to Hilgers and Ricketts, saying that the movie-musical “Reefer Madness” wasn’t a “documentary.”
“More people have died from the onions on the McDonald’s hamburger than have died from medical cannabis,” Becka said to a laughing crowd.
No deaths from overdoses of marijuana have been reported, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, though some edibles have led to an increasing number of emergency room visits.
‘Fight like our lives matter’
Multiple Nebraskans also encouraged lawmakers to act quickly, as some patients who could have gotten help or tested out the medication have died in 12 years of legislative waiting.
Jill Heese of Lincoln spoke of her mother, an open-minded Republican and licensed practical nurse who died of cancer in 2006. While some speakers said they would just go to Missouri for marijuana anyway, Heese said that wouldn’t be the case for her mother, a “kind, compassionate, law-abiding woman.”
Lia Post of Springfield read a written letter Monday on behalf of her friend Angie Cornett of Norfolk, who missed the meeting to bury her mother.
Cornett, a nurse, wrote that her mom endured severe and chronic pain for decades. When she tried cannabis for the first time 25 years ago, at age 50, it eliminated the severe burning pain in her feet caused by severe nerve damage from her back and apathy from diabetes.
Cornett said her mom described the new pain relief as “stepping on cold slushy watermelon.”
A “cocktail” of addictive pain relief medications was part of her mom’s medical regimen, Cornett said, adding she couldn’t help but wonder how her mom’s life could have changed with medical cannabis.
“She knew exactly what she was voting for, and as I bury my mom today, I want you to know that she is just one of many patients who have died waiting for the right to access plant-based medicines in Nebraska and access to a God-given plant that was used medicinally since the ancient times,” Cornett wrote Monday.
Post, a frequent medical cannabis advocate at the Nebraska State Capitol, said she is one of a handful of longtime advocates who have been told by lawmakers to mind their interactions and cool frustrations or methods of advocacy, such as Post telling Republicans that patients are dying.
Even so, Post said the roadblocks won’t make her back down from a disease — complex regional pain syndrome — that will one day take her life.
“Fight for us. Fight like our lives matter,” Post said Saturday. “None of you are God, and you do not deserve to play God in this anymore.”
Seeing patients
Dominic and Shelley Gillen of Bellevue have been in the fight for 12 years, similar to the Bronsons, for their now 23-year-old son Will, who similarly has a severe form of drug-resistant epilepsy and is referred to by friends and family as “God’s Will.”
In that time, Dominic Gillen estimated, his son has faced more than 450,000 seizures and “a body littered with scars.”
Dominic Gillen said he considers Hilgers’ efforts against the medical cannabis campaign and its many volunteers, patients and caregivers, the type of “lawfare” that Republicans lamented under former President Joe Biden. At each event, Gillen told senators to see the patients, “not look through them.”
“Will has never spoken a word, but he’s touched countless lives in this state and other states through his story,” Dominic Gillen said. “Will is truly the greatest of blessings. He’s perfect even in his imperfection.”
Hansen, too, urged Nebraskans to share their stories and photos with lawmakers, particularly Republicans. “Out of curiosity,” he asked Sunday whether those in attendance would support recreational marijuana if LB 677 failed and the regulations became too restrictive.
Nearly everyone raised their hands. Hansen said he’s telling his colleagues to pass LB 677 and regulate medical cannabis, or the voters will end up legalizing recreational marijuana. Hilgers and other opponents of medical cannabis and recreational marijuana have said LB 677 would open the door to recreational use already.
Court battles continue in front of the Nebraska Supreme Court and in courts in Hall County, against a notary, and Lancaster County. The Nebraska Attorney General’s Office has argued the laws are preempted by federal law and threatened to sue the Medical Cannabis Commission if it issues dispensary licenses.
Notaries targeted in those cases have pledged innocence, including Jacy Todd of York, a notary who faces first-of-their-kind criminal charges in Grand Island. None of the four notaries targeted in the case before the Nebraska Supreme Court has been criminally charged, though a lower-court judge tossed some of their signatures. Hilgers said the lack of charges shouldn’t be “read into.
Hilgers, joined by various sheriffs on Wednesday, said that medical cannabis and LB 677 are “going to make Nebraska less safe, more dangerous. It’s going to handcuff the good men and women here that are in front of you and all their colleagues around the state.”
‘Let’s take away this pain’
Todd, a disabled veteran, was among those asking lawmakers to act and include post-traumatic stress disorder in the list of acceptable conditions for use, the removal of which Hansen said was one of the “negotiating factors” that was needed to get LB 677 out of the General Affairs Committee.
Two amendments from State Sen. John Cavanaugh of Omaha would add PTSD to the list. The first directly, the second by removing the list altogether and leaving the decision between doctors and patients.
Matt Bronson, who served in the military, left for war at age 19. He said he broke his back in 2007, struggles with PTSD, is a recovering alcoholic and has lost most sensation in his legs. He was given many options, including opiates and other addictive pain medications. Before Teddy was born, he said he tried to take his life.
Medical cannabis is not about Matt Bronson or Teddy getting high — “I give two s— about getting high,” his father says.
However, Bronson says he can’t take the addictive medications, get significant back surgery or be put in a wheelchair for 18 months because he and Liz Bronson need to care for Teddy at a moment’s notice, who comes first above his own health.
“Let’s take away this pain,” Matt Bronson said. “I don’t want to remember those brothers and sisters I lost in war. I don’t want to remember every single damn casket I put on the back of C-17 flying home covered in the damn flag. I love my country, but God damn, Uncle Sam, let’s do something about this s—.”
Nebraska Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Aaron Sanderford for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com.
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At just 7 years old, Teddy Bronson of Omaha has faced six brain surgeries, been prescribed 14 different drugs and used about half a million dollars in medical hardware to fight his drug-resistant epilepsy that at one time had him enduring an average of 3,800 seizures each month. Read More
