“She’s exhausted every type of medication possible and there’s evidence out there that it will help minimize her seizures,” said Donna Basehore, a congregation member and family friend of the Knechts. “It doesn’t create the marijuana-type high that’s perceived by most of the population.”

Mark Knecht said the family first learned of the unorthodox treatment after watching Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s documentary investigating the medicinal marijuana industry, titled “Weed.”

Gupta wrote in an editorial for CNN.com that the federal government has no evidence to support marijuana’s schedule one classification. Gupta described schedule one substances as the category “of the most dangerous drugs that have no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.”

“They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true,” he wrote. “It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.”

The Knechts also want the federal government to declassify marijuana as a schedule one controlled substance, a status that limits researchers who want to test the drug’s effect on a range of diseases.