Forrest Smelser is only 8 years old
and living with epilepsy. When typical prescription drugs only made him worse,
his family began looking into medical marijuana.
A go-to argument for marijuana
opponents is that its legalization will lead to more use among young teens and
kids, as it becomes more accessible. But while all-out legalization is one
issue, what about when those kids need it medicinally? It’s probable many of
these opponents would be against that too, but they’re not seeing the benefit
it brings to some kids, either. Eight-year-old Forrest Smelser, from Eugene,
Ore., is one of those kids, and is among the 467,711 children living with epilepsy
in the United States.
Forrest was diagnosed with epilepsy
only a week after his eighth birthday. The disease causes recurrent seizures
that range in severity; an epileptic seizure can cause anything from a blank
stare or rapid blinking to unconsciousness, rigidity and muscle jerks, and
confusion. On some of Forrest’s worst days, he’d experience these seizures
every 15 minutes, KOMO News reported. “If he has a seizure that lasts longer
than three minutes, we’re venturing into brain damage territory,” his mom,
Tanesha Smelser, told KMTR Eugene.
Doctors prescribed Forrest
Trileptal, an anti-seizure medication. But although his seizures had stopped,
he was experiencing side effects the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notes
occur in about one of every 500 people. “He would scream, he would fight, he
would punch himself,” Melser said. Combined with his anger, he also had
suicidal thoughts, and once even attempted it. This was her family’s breaking
point, and they began looking into giving Forrest medical marijuana.
Nine weeks into being 8, and
Forrest’s life is looking a lot calmer, but it’s not because he’s high all the
time. The medical marijuana he gets comes in a capsule filled with
marijuana-infused oil. Provided by TJ’s Organic Gardens, a Eugene-based medical
marijuana farm that’s providing the marijuana for free, it’s a special strain
of marijuana containing mostly cannabidiol (CBD), the second most active
ingredient in marijuana — behind the high-inducing THC (tetrahydrocannabinol).
But unlike THC, it skips the high and provides analgesic, anti-inflammatory,
and anti-epileptic effects. In one 2013 study on CBD’s effect on epileptic
kids, 16 of 19 parents “reported a reduction in their child’s seizure
frequency.”
Forrest’s pills are produced through
an organic ethyl alcohol extraction process, after which the extracted oil is
then mixed with another edible oil, and put into the capsules. Forrest takes
three each day. “Now that I’m on this medication, I feel like a normal boy,” he
told KMTR. Roughly 195 of the 69,000 medical marijuana patients in Oregon are
under the age of 18, according to the Oregon Health Authority.
“I feel like it’s saved his life —
it has saved his life,” Smelser said. “I know it sounds scary, and I know it
sounds unconventional, but it’s working. It’s working!”
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