Currently there is no hard evidence that medical marijuana actually benefits children, and with evidence showing that it may harm developing brains, an influential pediatricians group says in a new policy published in the journal Pediatrics that the drug should only be used for severely ill children that have no other treatment options available.
Some parents swear by medical marijuana and insist that it has helped cure some of their children's most troublesome seizures, or has even led to other improvements. However, the American Academy of Pediatrics has now enacted a new policy saying more research must be done to substantiate these claims.
The group wants to make this research easier to do, as well, and has recommended that marijuana be removed from the government's most restrictive drug category, which includes other illegal drugs such as heroin, LSD and other narcotics with no accepted medical use, and rather moved into the category that includes drugs such as methadone and oxycodone.
The recommended switch "could help make a big difference in promoting more research," the policy's lead author and Professor of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at Stanford University, Dr. Seth Ammerman says.
The academy's qualified support may lead more pediatricians to prescribe medical marijuana, but the group says that pediatric use should only be considered "for children with life-limiting or severely debilitating conditions and for whom current therapies are inadequate."
The academy has repeated its advice against legalizing marijuana for recreational use by adults, believing that it could make it easier for children to obtain. Studies have linked recreational marijuana use in kids with negative effects on health and brain development, including problems with memory, concentration, attention, judgment and reaction time.
"The cart is so far ahead of the horse related to this drug," says Dr. Angus Wilfong, of Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. "Marijuana has dozens of chemical components that need to be studied just like any drug to determine safety, proper doses and potential side effects."
Wilfong was recently involved in an international study that was recently completed involving 30 children with severe epilepsy. About half got a new experimental drug made with a marijuana compound that doesn't make users high, while the others received dummy medication. The results of this study are still being analyzed and have yet to be published.
Wilfong did say, however, that he has a young seizure patient in a different, less rigorous study who has shown dramatic improvement after several months on the marijuana-based treatment, "but that doesn't prove it was due to the experimental drug."
