Marijuana's Journey into Pediatrics

            With many states legalizing marijuana as more of it’s benefits surface, a controversy that’s arising is whether or not CBD should be used medicinally to treat children or adolescents. CBD, or cannabidiol, differs from THC in that it doesn’t have any psychoactive effects, therefor it doesn’t get one high. Its known to work exceptionally at easing nausea that’s often caused from chemotherapy, reduce seizures with those who have disorders such as epilepsy, and even increase the ability to focus with those whom have attention deficit disorders. Even though marijuana is becoming legal among most states as it’s benefits become more known, the long term effect on use while the brain is developing is still unknown. This brings in the issue on whether or not its ethical to treat children with CBD rather than past treatments.

     One pediatrician took the child out of the picture when trying to settle this debate. Regardless of the effects it poses on the child, Julie Kim a pediatric oncologist of fifteen years has been seeing a side of prescribing opioids that’s often overlooked. A huge issue found is many parents taking the medications themselves instead of their sick child, creating an opioid addiction. In some cases, the parents make up the children’s pain just to get the prescription.  It’s often seen that parent keep persisting that the original recommendations of rest, ibuprophen, and physical therapy aren’t helping their child until they’re finally prescribed things such as oxycodone or morphine. From there, Kim has found that parents who struggle with these addictions start obtaining these prescriptions at an alarming rate that would normally way too often for a child to take. In attempt to try and trick these parents into stopping their addictions, Kim prescribes CBD instead, a much less dangerous and addictive drug. This way she eliminates any responsibility or liability she may have had if a parent ever experienced an overdose.

            Kim makes it clear throughout her article that she is pro-marijuana because she is anti-opioid. I think this is a very important way to look at this issue. When researching the pros and cons to prescribing a child medicinal marijuana, most cons consisted of there not being enough search to know that long term effects it may have on the child’s development, or that certain cognitive abilities may be impaired. Those are valid cons, but when looking at the bigger, more dangerous effects that other opioids prescribed to them have cannabinoids don’t compare. Plus, there have bee many cases in which CBD is more effective than other treatments. Until the opioid business gets proper regulation, marijuana may be a better way to help treat your child.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pro-marijuana-pediatrician-opioids_us_5ac281e0e4b04646b6452c1e

-Katherine Patota (3)