8 ms·

A low-THC cannabis strain for treating severe epilepsy

68 points by jonnathanson 12y ago

jwgur 12y ago
Fantastic writing.
justizin 12y ago
This is a really moving story and not the only of its' kind, but I also worry that a lot of people are being turned onto what we call CBD-only medical marijuana legislation, which is unfortunate. It is possible that some states or municipalities which are / were / will be ready for broader measures will take the half-measure of legalizing CBD-only treatments.
- ars 12y ago
  You make it sound like that's a bad thing to legalize CBD-only treatment. If CBD is the valuable compound here, why combine it with THC? Personally I think they should make it schedule 2 or 3 instead of 1 and let it be prescribed like all the thousands of other drugs - there is nothing special about marijuana that requires self-prescription. Edit: Looks like they've done that: http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/02/111641/marijuana-derived-epilepsy-drug-clinical-trial-children-uncontrolled-seizures http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/02/111641/marijuana-derived-ep... (Well actually I think people should be able to prescribe themselves anything they want as long as they pass a basic test on it, and take measures to avoid exposing other people - so smoking would be right out, but that's a different world.)
  - wavefunction 12y ago
    Pass a basic test? Written? Fill-in the blank? Multiple-choice? What would it test? The potential user's conformance to your ignorance about the effects of cannabis? Your idea is basic as hell, that's for sure.
    - ars 12y ago
      A test demonstrating knowledge of the proper time to use a drug, common side effects, and warning signs. I thought it was obvious. What would you test for? > The potential user's conformance to your ignorance about the effects of cannabis? A bit obsessed with cannabis are you? The test is before being able to self-prescribe ANY drug.
      - pstuart 12y ago
        What test do you insist people pass before consuming alcohol or tobacco? What about sugar?
        ars 12y ago
        > What test do you insist people pass before consuming alcohol or tobacco? The same test, and lower the legal age too. Or given current realities, leave the age alone with no test, and with a test a lower age. But as far as smoking goes you have to make sure to filter the smoke by some method and don't expose others. > What about sugar? Yes, sugar can be harmful, but it's hardly in the same class.
        adr 12y ago
        > Yes, sugar can be harmful, but it's hardly in the same class. It is certainly more addictive: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23719144 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23719144
        h1karu 12y ago
        European society thought of sugar as a drug for hundreds of years and it was traded in the British empire mostly by opium traders.
        pstuart 12y ago
        There is no fucking test, and no reason for one. You think you're trying to protect people but this kind of thinking is dangerous and you're too arrogant to understand that. Or a troll.
  - justizin 12y ago
    see, you have already misinterpreted an incredibly well written article and gone down the boxed canyon road. I think it's a bad idea to _only_ legalize CBD treatments, because THC is also valuable. There are also hundreds of other unclassified compounds in cannabis which are valuable. So what I'm concerned is, in some areas of the country where it is more difficult to pass legalization, some activists who probably know better will consider legislation that only allows very narrow compounds and in fact, it may be nearly impossible to create a plant that is not illegal under CBD-only legislation. Cannabis has countless uses, but speaking as someone who has participated in the authoring and passing of legislation, it's not easily amended or revisited. A lot of people who don't personally care about cannabis that much are willing to vote for cannabis legislation once in a while, but they just don't want to talk about it all the time. Passing legislation that is overly narrow on any issue that people don't want to talk about makes them feel as if they have accomplished something for another community, but they really don't want to have to go through all the details every year. Medical Cannabis itself has been described as a box canyon, largely because there are tons of medicinal herbs that just happen to never have had a war waged on them which noone would _think_ of regulating in the slightest. The problem this creates, of course, is that, say, at a free concert in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco if I ask people to sign a petition to put a legalization measure on the ballot, they laugh and say: "Dude, it's already legal!!" Thanks, Captain unregistered voter, I totally hadn't noticed. But it's not. That said, even with full legalization, medical cannabis will still be an important fight because it addresses the basic rights of people whose doctor have told them to use this substance. We're still fighting for legislation that prevents employers from being able to terminate a patient for cannabis use, and there are concerns about people on probation for non-drug offenses not being able to use it when in fact, it is often very helpful to them. Anyway, Charlotte's Web is great, it's really amazing and beautiful that cannabis is able to provide this sort of relief to such young children, and it does need to be available, everywhere, right now, for everyone. I'm just saying if someone is in a state and they think they can carry legislation across the finish line with stories like this, it's important to at least shoot for the bigger fight, because some children who have epilepsy may have parents, uncles, aunts, or grandparents with cancer or HIV and the munchies don't come from CBD. ;)
    - ars 12y ago
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - rms 12y ago
    CBD is more effective when combined with THC. The effective range is about 1:5 to 1:40.
  - neurobro 12y ago
    It does nothing to counteract the most harmful effects of prohibition: law enforcement resources squandered on crime associated with production/distribution, loss of goodwill between law enforcement and "criminals" involved with drugs, convicted offenders losing basic rights and access to resources that would help them to come clean and contribute to society, artificially inflated prices that also lead to crime and divert commerce from other sectors of the economy, users ingesting tainted drugs or switching to more harmful but more accessible drugs, ...
  - dassiev 12y ago
    depends on the illness. cbd helps with seizures, but not e.g. ptsd
h1karu 12y ago
Epilepsy is not the only condition this plant cures, far from it, it's just the most dramatic because you can measure the decrease in seizures so rapidly.
danford 12y ago
Cannabinoids are very interesting. They're naturally occurring in both plants and animals and researches believe the Endocannabinoid system (ECS) plays a very large role in homeostasis. Cannabinoids have even been shown to induce apoptosis (essentially reversing cancer cell growth). Within different strains of marijuana you get different ratios of different cannabinoids (THC, CBD, CBN, etc.) and the self-medicators have discovered that these different ratios are good for treating different ailments. I'm a firm believer that all cannabinoids need to be fully legal (and the cannabis plant material) so they can be studied in greater detail. I believe one day we'll see cannabinoids in our daily vitamin and mineral supplements (probably not the intoxicating kind though).

68 points by jonnathanson 12y ago

jwgur 12y ago

Fantastic writing.

This is a really moving story and not the only of its' kind, but I also worry that a lot of people are being turned onto what we call CBD-only medical marijuana legislation, which is unfortunate. It is possible that some states or municipalities which are / were / will be ready for broader measures will take the half-measure of legalizing CBD-only treatments.

ars 12y ago
You make it sound like that's a bad thing to legalize CBD-only treatment. If CBD is the valuable compound here, why combine it with THC? Personally I think they should make it schedule 2 or 3 instead of 1 and let it be prescribed like all the thousands of other drugs - there is nothing special about marijuana that requires self-prescription. Edit: Looks like they've done that: http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/02/111641/marijuana-derived-epilepsy-drug-clinical-trial-children-uncontrolled-seizures http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/02/111641/marijuana-derived-ep... (Well actually I think people should be able to prescribe themselves anything they want as long as they pass a basic test on it, and take measures to avoid exposing other people - so smoking would be right out, but that's a different world.)
- wavefunction 12y ago
  Pass a basic test? Written? Fill-in the blank? Multiple-choice? What would it test? The potential user's conformance to your ignorance about the effects of cannabis? Your idea is basic as hell, that's for sure.
  - ars 12y ago
    A test demonstrating knowledge of the proper time to use a drug, common side effects, and warning signs. I thought it was obvious. What would you test for? > The potential user's conformance to your ignorance about the effects of cannabis? A bit obsessed with cannabis are you? The test is before being able to self-prescribe ANY drug.
    - pstuart 12y ago
      What test do you insist people pass before consuming alcohol or tobacco? What about sugar?
      - ars 12y ago
        > What test do you insist people pass before consuming alcohol or tobacco? The same test, and lower the legal age too. Or given current realities, leave the age alone with no test, and with a test a lower age. But as far as smoking goes you have to make sure to filter the smoke by some method and don't expose others. > What about sugar? Yes, sugar can be harmful, but it's hardly in the same class.
        adr 12y ago
        > Yes, sugar can be harmful, but it's hardly in the same class. It is certainly more addictive: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23719144 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23719144
        h1karu 12y ago
        European society thought of sugar as a drug for hundreds of years and it was traded in the British empire mostly by opium traders.
        pstuart 12y ago
        There is no fucking test, and no reason for one. You think you're trying to protect people but this kind of thinking is dangerous and you're too arrogant to understand that. Or a troll.
- justizin 12y ago
  see, you have already misinterpreted an incredibly well written article and gone down the boxed canyon road. I think it's a bad idea to _only_ legalize CBD treatments, because THC is also valuable. There are also hundreds of other unclassified compounds in cannabis which are valuable. So what I'm concerned is, in some areas of the country where it is more difficult to pass legalization, some activists who probably know better will consider legislation that only allows very narrow compounds and in fact, it may be nearly impossible to create a plant that is not illegal under CBD-only legislation. Cannabis has countless uses, but speaking as someone who has participated in the authoring and passing of legislation, it's not easily amended or revisited. A lot of people who don't personally care about cannabis that much are willing to vote for cannabis legislation once in a while, but they just don't want to talk about it all the time. Passing legislation that is overly narrow on any issue that people don't want to talk about makes them feel as if they have accomplished something for another community, but they really don't want to have to go through all the details every year. Medical Cannabis itself has been described as a box canyon, largely because there are tons of medicinal herbs that just happen to never have had a war waged on them which noone would _think_ of regulating in the slightest. The problem this creates, of course, is that, say, at a free concert in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco if I ask people to sign a petition to put a legalization measure on the ballot, they laugh and say: "Dude, it's already legal!!" Thanks, Captain unregistered voter, I totally hadn't noticed. But it's not. That said, even with full legalization, medical cannabis will still be an important fight because it addresses the basic rights of people whose doctor have told them to use this substance. We're still fighting for legislation that prevents employers from being able to terminate a patient for cannabis use, and there are concerns about people on probation for non-drug offenses not being able to use it when in fact, it is often very helpful to them. Anyway, Charlotte's Web is great, it's really amazing and beautiful that cannabis is able to provide this sort of relief to such young children, and it does need to be available, everywhere, right now, for everyone. I'm just saying if someone is in a state and they think they can carry legislation across the finish line with stories like this, it's important to at least shoot for the bigger fight, because some children who have epilepsy may have parents, uncles, aunts, or grandparents with cancer or HIV and the munchies don't come from CBD. ;)
  - ars 12y ago
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- rms 12y ago
  CBD is more effective when combined with THC. The effective range is about 1:5 to 1:40.
- neurobro 12y ago
  It does nothing to counteract the most harmful effects of prohibition: law enforcement resources squandered on crime associated with production/distribution, loss of goodwill between law enforcement and "criminals" involved with drugs, convicted offenders losing basic rights and access to resources that would help them to come clean and contribute to society, artificially inflated prices that also lead to crime and divert commerce from other sectors of the economy, users ingesting tainted drugs or switching to more harmful but more accessible drugs, ...
- dassiev 12y ago
  depends on the illness. cbd helps with seizures, but not e.g. ptsd

h1karu 12y ago

Epilepsy is not the only condition this plant cures, far from it, it's just the most dramatic because you can measure the decrease in seizures so rapidly.

danford 12y ago

Cannabinoids are very interesting. They're naturally occurring in both plants and animals and researches believe the Endocannabinoid system (ECS) plays a very large role in homeostasis. Cannabinoids have even been shown to induce apoptosis (essentially reversing cancer cell growth). Within different strains of marijuana you get different ratios of different cannabinoids (THC, CBD, CBN, etc.) and the self-medicators have discovered that these different ratios are good for treating different ailments. I'm a firm believer that all cannabinoids need to be fully legal (and the cannabis plant material) so they can be studied in greater detail. I believe one day we'll see cannabinoids in our daily vitamin and mineral supplements (probably not the intoxicating kind though).