Parents ask lawmakers for pediatric medical marijuana

Lindsey Clark and her six-year-old twin boys Jeremy (in stripes) and Miles in their Darien home last year. Jeremy and Miles have Dravet syndrome, a form of childhood epilepsy. A bill Clark supprted last year that would allow parents to give children medical marijuana, has been revived this year. less Lindsey Clark and her six-year-old twin boys Jeremy (in stripes) and Miles in their Darien home last year. Jeremy and Miles have Dravet syndrome, a form of childhood epilepsy. A bill Clark supprted last year ... more Photo: Jason Rearick / Jason Rearick Buy photo Photo: Jason Rearick / Jason Rearick Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Parents ask lawmakers for pediatric medical marijuana 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

HARTFORD — Joy O’Meara, of Trumbull, can’t keep track of the times she’s made emergency calls for her 7-year-old son, Jamison, but she won’t forget the moments when she held his seemingly lifeless body and began CPR.

O’Meara and Jamison, in a wheelchair and a helmet, joined dozens of parents and others from throughout the state on Wednesday asking lawmakers to expand the state’s medical marijuana program to include children.

With intractable epilepsy and uncontrollable seizures, Jamison is fed five anti-seizure medications through a feeding tube each day. O’Meara wants to join parents in other states who have the option to use a medical-marijuana formula found to reduce the effect of seizures. Parents said they’re tired of drugging their children into catatonic states with narcotics.

“The children in Connecticut deserve the chance to try this treatment,” O’Meara told the legislative Public Health Committee. “Future generations should not have to suffer when a life-changing, possibly lifesaving treatment is available to children in other states.”

Jamison had his first seizure at 18 months of age. In the period between last September and December, he was at his sickest.

“He’s so amazing and strong,” O’Meara said in an interview. “We still have hope that something’s out there that can help. We’re not expecting a miracle.”

Similar legislation, proposed by the state Department of Consumer Protection, which administrates the program, failed last year.

This year’s bill would prohibit children from smoking the drug or inhaling its vapors — limiting its use instead to oral liquids and rectal suppositories for emergencies. The bill would also support research on the effects of cannabis to help medical professionals better understand the active ingredients of marijuana, which is still classified by the federal government as a Schedule I substance: addictive and without medical use.

Jonathan Harris, commissioner of the DCP, told the committee revisions are needed, as the medical-marijuana program has grown from 1,325 patients and 83 doctors in May 2014 to 8,671 patients and 435 doctors now. He said the program has helped to relieve patients from pain, symptoms and the underlying conditions of disease.

“Just the physician increase alone has shown that the stigma is being broken down, that there’s a more-growing acceptance from the medical community,” Harris told the lawmakers.

The General Assembly, over the protests of legislative opponents, approved the medical-cannabis program in 2012. It has become a national model, using licensed pharmacists to run the six dispensaries.

Two lawmakers among the most-opposed to the program, Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, and Rep. Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, a member of the Public Health Committee, both took shots Wednesday at the medical-marijuana program, even as a physician colleague, Dr. Prasad Srinivasan, R-Glastonbury, ranking member of the committee, praised it.

Lawmakers last week approved six new ailments, which were immediately added to the original 11. But in an unusual move on the Regulation Review Committee, lawmakers including Candelora rejected one condition for inclusion, after committee members said Harris may have overstepped his authority in recommending it.

“To me, sitting in Regulation Review, it felt like we’re getting into the wild West a little bit, where if voices loudly advocate for a certain illness to be treated ... it’s going to end up on the list and it’s going to be treated, even if there’s not any evidence that it could help that illness,” said Candelora, a lawyer who works at two family owned businesses.

“You never know how people are going to react to it,” Boucher told the committee. “It doesn’t take care of the underlying symptoms and sometimes it masks it. My concern is the children.”

The director of a nonprofit fund, Boucher supports medical marijuana only in cases of terminal illness.

The committee’s deadline for action is March 23.

kdixon@ctpost.com;