Many media outlets, including WebMD, wrote stories about the desperate families that move to Colorado seeking medical marijuana for their children with seizure disorders. At the same time, we also wanted to go more in-depth on the other side of that story: what happens when medical marijuana doesn’t help. Although we touched on that in our initial story, we weren’t able to get any families to come forward and talk on the record. But after writer Scott Rappold earned their trust through reporting and writing his first story, they were more willing to come forward. In addition to offering personal stories, Rappold’s story also highlights that there’s very little research on how well medical marijuana works on seizure disorders in children. Some epilepsy doctors estimate it only helps 1 in 4 children. While advocates didn’t agree to numbers that low, even they estimated that medical marijuana showed great success only 25% of the time and provided some help about 50% of the time. That leaves a quarter of children who will see no benefit at all.
