CANNABIS AND CHILDREN

Any consideration of cannabis as a medicine for infants or children must be approached with special caution and informed, professional medical oversight. Because cannabis constituents interact with the receptors that regulate physical development and a variety of functions throughout the body—including receptors associated with brain development—great care must be exercised.

With pediatric patients, the principal conditions for which medical cannabis is used are epilepsy and autism spectrum disorders that do not respond to conventional treatments. Because there are so few emerging pharmaceuticals for childhood cancers, increasingly parents are investigating the use of alternative treatments, including cannabis. All of these disorders are devastating to affected children and their families, so the hope that cannabis might bring relief can be very compelling.

Preliminary Findings