Marijuana has caught a bad rap in years past with propaganda and the Controlled Substance Act of 1970 which put marijuana as a schedule one drug offence. In recent years, with the advancement in state regulations to enable the use of medical marijuana, scientist are finding more and more benefits of medical marijuana. Along side of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC you have CBD or cannabidiol. Cannabidiol’s have been studied heavily in recent years and have shown CBD’s to decrease brain activities in patients with seizures to prevent them from having epileptic episodes.
In an article titled Is marijuana bad, or could it be good for some? by Dr. Sanjay Gupta found on CNN.com, it tells of a story of a little girl named Charlotte. Charlotte is now a 7 year old little girl that has been diagnosed with Dravet Syndrome. Her mother and father are well educated parents that met at Colorado State University and were then married. They had their first child Max in 2004 and then gave birth to a set of twins on October 18, 2006. Charlotte is one of the twins that was born healthy and after 3 months, she started having violent seizures that would last 30 minutes or more. Over the next few months of Charlotte’s life after the first seizure, she began to have more frequent seizures that would last two to four hours. The parents began to worry for Charlotte and looking for alternative medications to help their baby girl.
Written by Maria Roberta Cilio, MD, PhD, Principal investigator for the multi-center study
and director of research at the UCSF Pediatric Epilepsy Center she explains, “It’s important to get seizure control at any age, but in children, uncontrolled seizures may impact brain and neurocognitive development, which can have an extraordinary effect on quality of life and contribute to progressive cognitive impairment”(Cilio). The Figi’s were trying everything they could to help their very young daughter. After a year of numerous treatments and seven different medications, some of which included highly addictive barbiturates and benzodiazepines, the family was getting nervous that this was going to bring on more problems and not fix the issue at hand. After seeking out other forms of care from France and also in Chicago, Matt was researching endlessly to find an alternative cure or treatment and ran across an online video from California. The video was of a boy whose Dravet syndrome was being treated with cannabis and proving successful. The Health Cure states, “Some had initial reservations about using cannabis on their children, but were eager to try alternatives to conventional phamaceuticals. The prospect of less-psychoatcive cannabis piqued their interest, especially in light of the anticonvulsant and anti-inflammatory properties of CBD”(The Health Cure).