Kids with seizures use pot as treatment

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20140219/LIVEWELL01/140218614/1707#kids-with-seizures-use-pot-as-treatment

The Associated Press February 19, 2014

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The doctors were out of ideas to help 5-year-old Charlotte Figi.

Suffering from a rare genetic disorder, she had as many as 300 grand mal seizures a week, used a wheelchair, went into repeated cardiac arrest and could barely speak. As a last resort, her mother began calling medical marijuana shops.


Two years later, Charlotte is largely seizure-free and able to walk, talk and feed herself after taking oil infused with a special pot strain. Her recovery has inspired both a name for the strain of marijuana she takes that is bred not to make users high — Charlotte's Web — and an influx of families with seizure-stricken children to Colorado from states that ban the drug.

“She can walk, talk; she ate chili in the car,” her mother, Paige Figi, said as her dark-haired daughter strolled through a cavernous greenhouse full of marijuana plants that will later be broken down into their anti-seizure components and mixed with olive oil so patients can consume them. “So I'll fight for whoever wants this.”

But doctors say there is no proof that Charlotte's Web is effective, or even safe.

FULL story at link.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. DU Rec