Is Medical Marijuana Good for Children? Some Doctors Say Yes But Others Have Qualms About the Drug

United States Doctors in 18 states including Washington D.C.  prescribe marijuana for children to treat health issues such as autism, cancer and seizures, reports NBC News.

While some doctors have positive reviews about medical marijuana, some still have reservations about it.

Doctors diagnosed 6-month-old Zaki Jackson with a form of epilepsy that caused nearly 250 seizures every day. The doctors treated him with all the medications possible, but Zaki showed no improvement. Finally, after 10 years and numerous medications, physicians prescribed him marijuana and the little boy responded positively.

Zaki's parents found it surprising that the doctor suggested marijuana for their ailing kid. "We are Christians," Zaki's mother Heather Jackson said. "We are conservative. And we're using medical marijuana. That's a kind of big hump for people to get over. Despite the stigma associated with cannabis, we owed it to Zaki to give it a try." But she added that she was pleased with the results. "I probably stared at him for a good three hours after his first dose and then I fell asleep. I didn't feel any seizures after his first dose."

However, this is not the first time that doctors have relied on marijuana to treat children with autism, cancer and seizures. Some physicians, under parental supervision, advise taking marijuana.

But the American Academy of Pediatrics and other doctors oppose the prescription of cannabis. They say that the effect of marijuana is not clinically tested and can have long-term side-effects.

In Zaki's case, the child had his last seizure eight months ago and is now involved in normal activities like playing on the swing and riding a bicycle etc.

NBC News reported that Zaki's marijuana is specially provided by a team of brothers who legally grow medical marijuana. It has been bred to have low levels of TCH, but higher levels of another cannabinoid called cannabidiol or CBD.

According to Dr Margaret Gedde of the Clinicians' Institute for Cannabis Medicine, although both cannabinoids impact pain, nausea and seizures, CBD isn't psychoactive. This means that children taking CBD will not get intoxicated.

Doctors advised Zaki to consume marijuana mixed in a syrup every day. It contains an extract of purified cannabis oil that is high in CBD, Dr Gedde said.

Although the drug may be working in Zaki's case, some doctors still say that it might be unsafe for children because it has not been tested clinically.

"I worry that we just don't know enough about it," said Dr Sharon Levy of the Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School, to NBC News. "I think they're putting their child at risk of long-term consequences of marijuana use that we don't fully understand."

In the past there have been examples where such therapies went wrong. "A couple of generations ago physicians were recommending tobacco as a good method of relaxation or to relieve stress," Dr Levy said. "It seems unbelievable now."

However, Dr Gedde maintained that children like Zaki need help right now and that "medicine existed before the Food and Drug Administration." She said that the some might be critical of the drug but "this is a substance that's been used for thousands of years and it has a known safety profile." "And there's a long history of women using it in pregnancy. If there was some terrible defect that came up in children exposed in utero, we'd know about it by now."