Last year, Dara Lightle and her nine-year-old daughter, Madeleine, became “marijuana refugees” when they moved from Virginia to Colorado. At the time, Madeleine was suffering from hundreds of seizures a day. Her doctors in Virginia recommended brain surgery. Then Dara heard how cannabis oil had treated children suffering from similar conditions. The oil worked. But since the oil was considered an illegal drug in much of the country, they had to move to Colorado, where it is legal, to continue treatment. According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, at least 115 “marijuana refugee families” from 43 states have left jobs, homes and family so they could obtain the cannabis oil to treat a variety of ailments. We speak to Dara and Madeleine in Denver.
Dr. Margaret Gedde talking:
My original training in medicine is in pathology and research. I did my Ph.D. as well as my M.D. in chemistry. I did that at Stanford University. I did many years of research, and then I started to work in the pharmaceutical industry developing medications. And it was about 10 years ago that I had a realization that the drugs so often chosen for development in the pharmaceutical industry are chosen, of course, to make a profit and not necessarily because that’s what people need. And I—then I also realized there many therapies that already exist that are more supportive and less toxic than pharmaceuticals, that that can have tremendous benefit, but most doctors don’t know about. So, this was before I learned at all about cannabis. I did open an alternative medical practice about 10 years ago and have been seeing patients to give them supportive, holistic therapies.
It was four years ago, when this all came up in Colorado, going on five years ago, that I first started to hear that marijuana could be medicine. I was encouraged to see a few patients in my practice to do the recommendations, as they are called in Colorado. And then I started hearing from my patients all this—a list of things that marijuana seemed to help them with. And I started to ask: How can this do so many things for people and not be toxic, because it has such a safe profile, again, compared to so many pharmaceuticals? That’s when I learned about the endocannabinoid system, which is simply that we have our own human cannabinoids. We make our own cannabinoids in our bodies, and this system is very important in regulating other body systems. So when I kind of got onto that—it was about four years ago—then I decided to completely focus my practice on medical marijuana, on medical cannibis. It was about two years after that, two years ago, that I first met Charlotte Figi, and we started seeing children for the seizure disorders—again, not really knowing what effect that would have, but just continuing to pursue this possibility for these families.
we’ve seen now in clinic over 200 children specifically for this. Not all of them have been able to—200. Not all of them have been able to start the oil yet, so we don’t have follow-up results on everyone. But what does happen is, you have to be careful how you use the oil. It’s easy to get overloaded. We’re finding that low doses are often more effective than high doses. There can be bumps in the road. But I would say that about a quarter of the children get results like Charlotte did, where they’ll get that 80 percent or more seizure reduction. Another 50 percent get definite positive results, including the behavioral and cognitive improvements that Dara was talking about, in addition to some seizure control. So there can be some mixed results, but definitely positive benefit. There is a percent of kids who have a lot of trouble adding the oil in any amount, and we continue to work with them to find combinations and doses that will work. So the majority do get some definite positive benefit, although not every child does, for sure. And we’re continuing to learn the proper ways to dose this and how to understand what combinations are going to work for each child.
So the state of research around marijuana, cannabis, is that because it is a Schedule I controlled substance by the federal government, stating that it’s highly dangerous with no medical use, it is essentially impossible to do the proper clinical trials. So we’re in a catch-22 where people say you don’t have the studies, but then you can’t do the studies. Now, there is a long track record, of course, of human use, actually thousands of years, not specifically in pediatric seizures, but also there are studies coming from other countries, and there is a large body of animal and laboratory work supporting the clinical trials that could go on. So it absolutely is the case that the trials are not there yet that we need. On the other hand, we have a lot of information about this medication, and we know that its safety profile is much better, it’s much safer, just with what we know about it, than so many medications that are already in use.
So it’s correct that the establishment has this issue where the proper things aren’t in place. As physicians looking to benefit patients, however, if you can look at the risk and benefit for each patient, when you look at the condition the child is in and the fact that death is a real possibility for many of them, and then what is known about the cannabis safety profile, even though we don’t have that solid research underpinning yet, as physicians treating a particular patient, definitely, I think that you can make a very strong case that the patient and the doctor, together, should be able to look at all the possible treatments and choose cannabis as something to try, because—call it a therapeutic trial. It doesn’t mean they’re committed to using it forever. But I—even though we don’t have the studies, I think that, again, doctors and patients are well within the very good and ethical practice of medicine to consider this as an option for a particular person.
Dave Philipps talking:
in cannabis, there are several different kinds. The one that gets smokers high is THC. The one that is really plentiful in the oil the kids use is something called CBD, or cannabidiol. And basically, from my understanding, it acts as sort of a neuroregulator, something that keeps brain signals sort of calm and steady. So, it has absolutely no psychoactive effects. You could drink a whole bottle of it, and it wouldn’t get you high. But it does have this very powerful effect on regulating brain signals.
we’ve had medical marijuana here since 2000. And in 2008, it really started to take off in terms of the number of people who were—had shops that sold medical marijuana and the number of people who had cards. And I think most people in Colorado believe that the majority of medical marijuana users were actually recreational users who were using the Red Card sort of as a fig leaf for their illegal use. There were also all sorts of people using it legitimately to treat ailments under the law. I think a lot of states look at that and say, “Well, we don’t want that. That’s not something that we’re interested in.”
Then Colorado went one step further, and this year we legalized recreational marijuana, which is funny because the national press made a big deal of it, but it was really not a big deal here because we’ve had medical marijuana stores, essentially, all over the state for years. And so, now the fact that you can go in without having to have a state-mandated card is not a big change. And I think Coloradans don’t even really notice it.
How has it affected the economy? Well, things that were in the black market are now out in the open, which means they can be regulated and taxed. I don’t think that there are many people who see that as a bad thing.
Dara Lightle talking:
My daughter, it currently costs about $450 a month. She’s on two forms, two different properties of the cannabis plant oil currently. She started with Charlotte’s Web, and we did add THCA. It’s a raw form of THC, also doesn’t have psychoactive properties. But she’s on both of those currently, and it’s about $450 a month. Now, for an adult, it could be up to $900 to $1,000 a month.
— source democracynow.org
Dave Philipps, investigative reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette. He has spent the last year covering the rapid rise in the use of cannabis for medical purposes in epileptic children. His most recent article in The Gazette is “As Success Stories of Kids Fighting Seizures with Cannabis Oil Mount, Legal Landscape Is Changing.”
Margaret Gedde, founder of the Clinicians’ Institute for Cannabis Medicine, and owner and founder of Gedde Whole Health in Colorado Springs.
Dara Lightle, moved to Colorado last October to seek treatment for her daughter, Madeleine, who has epilepsy.