Pubdate: Sun, 23 Feb 2014
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)
Copyright: 2014 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC.
Contact:  http://www.timesdispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/365
Page: A15

KIDS WITH SEIZURES USE STRAIN OF POT AS TREATMENT

This Type of the Drug Is Bred Not to Make Users High

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 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 whomever wants this."

Doctors warn there is no proof that Charlotte's Web is effective, or
even safe.

In the frenzy to find the drug, there have been reports of
non-authorized suppliers offering bogus strains of Charlotte's Web. In
one case, a doctor said, parents were told they could replicate the
strain by cooking marijuana in butter. Their child went into heavy
seizures.

Still, more than 100 families have relocated since Charlotte's story
first began spreading last summer, according to Figi and her husband.
The relocated families have formed a close knit group in Colorado
Springs, the law-and-order town where the dispensary selling the drug
is located. They meet for lunch, support sessions and hikes.

"It's the most hope lots of us have ever had," said Holli Brown, whose
9year-old daughter, Sydni, began speaking in sentences and laughing
since moving to Colorado from Kansas City and taking the marijuana
strain.

Amy Brooks-Kayal, vice president of the American Epilepsy Society,
warned that a few miraculous stories may not mean anything - epileptic
seizures come and go for no apparent reason - and scientists do not
know what sort of damage Charlotte's Web could be doing to young brains.

Rather than move to Colorado, she suggested that parents relocate so
their children can get treated at one of the nation's 28 top-tier
pediatric epilepsy centers.

However, the society urges more study of pot's possibilities. The
families using Charlotte's Web, as well as the brothers who grow it,
say they want the drug rigorously tested, and their efforts to ensure
its purity have won them praise from skeptics.
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MAP posted-by: Matt