Families migrate to Colorado for marijuana miracle

[Jesus Malverde]

The waiting list for the cannabis extract includes about 30 kids in Utah whose parents hope to import what they consider an ‘herbal’ remedy.

Piper rolls back and forth across a large blanket on the living room floor, windmilling her arms and kicking her legs.

"Who’s a happy girl?" asks her mom, Annie Koozer, kneeling over the 2-year-old with a small, oil-filled syringe. Piper fusses as Annie squirts a tiny amount into the side of her mouth.

The Koozers are part of a migration of families uprooting their lives and moving to Colorado, where the medicinal use of marijuana is permitted. More than medical tourists, they are medical refugees, forced to flee states where cannabis is off limits.

"This is just the first wave," said Margaret Gedde, a Colorado Springs physician with a doctorate from Stanford who prescribes marijuana and has compiled case studies of children using cannabis-infused oil. "These families are going to keep coming as awareness spreads because the results are real."

Gedde has been monitoring 11 children with seizure disorders who are taking the same cannabis extract Piper is receiving, and she will present her findings at the annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Association in December.

Nine of the children have had a 90 to 100 percent reduction in their seizures, she said. The parents of one child aren’t sure the oil has helped, but it hasn’t hurt. And the other had a 50 percent reduction.

"It’s absolutely remarkable," she said.

Medical marijuana is currently legal in 20 states, plus D.C. and Portland, Maine. But Colorado has become the go-to place for an extract from a plant that’s high in cannabidiol (CBD) but low in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive chemical component of marijuana that creates a high in users.

Marijuana entrepreneurs and cultivators Joel, Jesse, Jonathan, Jordan, Jared and Josh Stanley call it Charlotte’s Web, named for the Colorado Springs girl who tried it first and went from having 300 seizures a week to about two a month. Videos showing a once-catatonic Charlotte Figi now talking, running on a beach and horseback riding have lured families from far and wide.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57052556-78/piper-annie-seizures-cbd.html.csp

Shocking to me this is coverage from the Salt Lake Tribune

[AgingAmerican]

1. In Washington state

The legislature is trying to undo 20 years of medical marijuana precedent because they believe it will compete with state ran marijuana stores. Expect a wave of same coming from Washington.

[Jesus Malverde]

2. Slow-growing Charlotte’s Web yields marijuana designed for kids

Low in THC, the compound that gives users a high, this specialized plant is in high demand.

Preparing Charlotte’s Web is a protracted, tedious process that starts at "the grow," two massive greenhouses on 56 acres of spring-fed land at an undisclosed location in the mountains.

It’s harvest time and the greenhouses are full of towering plants.

Colorado’s sunny climate allows the nonprofit Realm of Caring Foundation to grow marijuana year-round. It gets two harvests a year, but hopes to ramp up production to three to four harvests through a light deprivation strategy that causes the plants to flower in winter.

About a third of each greenhouse is devoted to Charlotte’s Web, a shorter, squattier plant that grows more slowly than other varieties. The plant is high in cannabidiol (CBD) but low in tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the component of marijuana that creates a high in users.

It’s in such high demand by parents of ill children, typically kids with epilepsy, that Realm can’t immediately supply them all.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57091272-78/charlotte-web-marijuana-colorado.html.csp

[Dustlawyer]

3. I wish more states and more doctors would get behind this very necessary drug.

[liberal_at_heart]

4. I'm in WA and I feel like moving to CO. At least they're not trying to destroy medical

marijuana.