Utah CBD: Did these parents’ fight help their epileptic kids? – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

They don’t get together much, these moms and dads whose desperate search for something — anything — that would provide relief to their children with severe forms of epilepsy set them on a course that changed Utah.

The doctor-prescribed medications and special diets didn’t seem to do anything to control the dozens, even hundreds, of often violent seizures their young daughters and sons endured every day.

All of these parents had concluded that the answer might lie in marijuana, the much-maligned hippie culture plant mainstream America had shunned for decades.

Despite being told Utah would never legalize marijuana in any form, not medicinal and certainly not recreational, these mostly conservative, self-described “Molly Mormon” moms persuaded reluctant state lawmakers to let them use cannabidiol, or CBD, to treat their children’s epilepsy.

“People can walk into Maverik and get a case of beer, but I can’t get a nonpsychotropic oil for my kid,” said Jennifer May, one of the group’s leaders. “That just made me so arrrgh.”

What they did in a few short months nearly a decade ago would help pave the way for Utah to legalize medical cannabis, though that was never their goal.