User post: Giving marijuana to autistic children

When I was growing up in California, kids hush-hushed giggled about not taking homemade brownies from people when we trick or treated: There might be you know what in those brownies.

You know.

Marijuana.

Flash forward to the day after Halloween more than three decades later and, in checking the news about autism (as I have a son now and he is on the autism spectrum), I read about a Colorado mother, Babette Dickson, giving her autistic son James (he is the same age as my son) marijuana. In peanut butter cake, brownies, and tinctures.

As reported in the October 31st Steamboat Springs Pilot:

She said James, who struggles with language, sometimes gets frustrated and angry when he has trouble communicating. She said he has anxiety. Yet, Dickson said James has been calmer the few times he has ingested medical marijuana.

"I think if some people are offended or shocked by this, that's OK," Dickson said. "I know what's best for my child. It's a choice I made for James."

Dickson has obtained a medical marijuana registry car for James. It has been legal for people with 'certain medical conditions and a doctor's recommendation to take marijuana in Colorado since the approval of Amendment 20 in 2000. Some fifteen states (California was the first, allowing marijuana to be used for medical conditions since 1996) have approved the use of medical marijuana.

Autism is not listed as one of those conditions in Colorado and Dickson says that James has an approved condition, muscle spasms.

Because he is a minor, state law requires that two doctors approve his use of marijuana. Two physicians did so via teleconference from Rocky Mountain Remedies in Steamboat, a practice that is no longer legal.

One of the doctors, a Denver physician, declined to comment for this story. The other doctor, a Denver obstetrician and gynecologist, couldn't be reached for comment. Several Steamboat physicians also declined to comment about the viability of marijuana as a treatment method for the symptoms of autism.

The mother of another autistic chid, Marie Lee, has also written about giving her autistic son marijuana and noting improvements. As I wrote about a year and a half ago on this topic:

No medication has been a "magic pill" for Charlie's challenges and we're not looking for such, but rather ways to help him do well at school, learn, reach his full potential.

Which grandiose statement having been made, what could be a better comment on how life raising a child on the autism spectrum, a child who's different, throws everything upside down all around, than realizing that you've just spent a part of your evening thinking about what would happen if you gave your child ...... a joint, the very behavior that kids in middle school get sent to the Vice Principal's office for?

It can indeed be hard to keep track of everything that has been suggested as a treatment for autism. Most parents settle on some combination of educational and medical therapies---speech and occupational therapies, medications---and it is not at all uncommon for families to try various (unproven) complementary and alternative medicine treatments that involve any (every) thing from nutritional supplements to chelation via detoxifying agents. I rather suspect that medical marijuana will not be a treatment that parents will be as likely to try---but then, with legislation like California's Proposition 19 (which calls for the legalization of marijuana) moving forward, I have a feeling we haven't heard the last about this latest autism 'treatment.'
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