Bill passes on medical marijuana for children

Law is expected to take effect Oct. 1

From their son’s hospital room in Boston, Pawcatuck residents Linda and Chris Lloyd followed a Connecticut Senate debate and vote Friday night that gave them hope that 6-year-old Henry may finally be able to get relief from his suffering.

“In the midst of our exhaustion and watching our son struggle, we had a moment of celebration,” Linda Lloyd said in an email message on Monday, while her son was still hospitalized.

The reason for her reaction was the Senate’s passage of a bill legalizing medical marijuana for children, following passage by the House earlier in April. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s office said he plans to sign the bill, which will take effect on Oct. 1. The bill expands on the 2012 law that legalized medical marijuana for adults.

“It’s like a weight has been lifted off our shoulders knowing that Bill 5450 has passed,” said Lloyd, who testified during a public hearing at the legislature this winter about her son’s severe epilepsy and ineffectiveness of traditional pharmaceuticals.

The bill allows those under 18 to be treated with only with forms of medical marijuana that cannot be smoked, inhaled or vaporized, provided that the child’s primary care doctor or pediatrician and a specialist treating the child’s condition confer on providing a prescription. The law specifies conditions it can be prescribed for, including uncontrolled intractable seizure disorder, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy and severe epilepsy.

Chris Collibee, spokesman for Malloy, said the governor supported the bill to help families of children with severe illnesses who are not responding to other medications.

“We introduced this bill to support those who need it,” Collibee said. “This is a deeply emotional issue for many families. Delivering access to ease illness is something many states have passed. It’s the right thing to do.”

For Cara Tarricone of Windham, legalization of medical marijuana for minors can’t come soon enough. Her 8-yearold daughter, West, suffers from intractable epilepsy that caused her to have eight major seizures on Sunday alone. She hopes the governor’s office allows immediate access after the bill is signed for medically fragile children like West. She said West has been given 17 different anti-seizure medications, all of which have failed.

“There are about 100 children in Connecticut who might need this,” she said. “It’s not a huge number, but the impact on those who will be able to get this medication will be huge.”

Tarricone said she’s been advocating for legalization for the past three years, after hearing about a friend’s child with a condition similar to West’s who had improved when she began receiving marijuana oil treatments. The friend had moved with her child to Colorado, where it was already legal.

The bill passed during this session is a revised version of one introduced in the 2015 session that failed to win support. This year, groups including the state departments of Consumer Protection and Public Health and the Connecticut Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics supported the bill.

“We had a lot of momentum,” Tarricone said. “We kept it alive after last year. We didn’t give up.”

She and other parents advocating for the bill created a Facebook page, Medical Cannabis 4 Kids in CT.

State Rep. Kevin Ryan, D- Montville, introduced the 2015 version of the bill and supported the 2016 bill. During a statement after the bill’s passage in the House, Ryan noted that the bill has been called “Cyndimae’s Law” in honor of Cyndimae Meehan, a 13-yearold whose mother, Susan, contacted Ryan about the obstacles she faced in Connecticut with getting medical marijuana treatment for her daughter, who had a severe form of epilepsy. The Meehans moved from their home in Montville to Maine, where medical marijuana is legal for minors, to be able to administer marijuana oils.

“This reduced the number and severity of seizures she was having and improved her quality of life, so that she was able to go to school,” Ryan said.

He thanked Cyndimae, who died in March, and her mother.

“We wouldn’t have achieved this victory if not for the incredible advocacy of Cyndimae and her mother,” Ryan said. Their advocacy “opened doors for other children in need of treatment.”

Once the law takes effect, parents will be able to have their prescriptions filled at one the six dispensaries in the state, including Thames Valley Alternative Relief in Montville. Laurie Zrenda, owner and pharmacist, said her dispensary currently sells a couple of types of medical marijuana that could be sold for children, but she hopes more kinds will become available. Medical marijuana for children would be in formulations high in cannabidiol, or CBD, the therapeutic ingredient in marijuana, but low in tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the substance that produces the “high,” Zrenda said.

“Our big hurdle is going to with the growers,” she said, referring to the four licensed growers in the state that supply the product to the dispensaries. “I hope the growers are prepared.”