Parents Move for Medical Pot for Epileptic Son
BANFIELD: CNN is digging deeper into the pot boom this week. Sales of marijuana have taken off in Colorado since it became legal on January 1st, and more states are considering legalizing medical marijuana, not recreational, medical. Tomorrow night, Dr. Sanjay Gupta continues his ground breaking reporting in a documentary called "Weed Part 2." Here's a sneak peek.</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: The federal government says marijuana is among the most addictive drugs with no medicinal value. Many serious scientists say they're wrong.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a medicine.</s>GUPTA: It's the politics of pot, pitting policy against patients, trapped in the middle, sick, qualified people who want medical marijuana, but can't get it. Because it's illegal.</s>BANFIELD: Well, you might want to ask some of the questions that relate to all of that to a family personally impacted by Dr. Gupta's first documentary. Aaron and Dawn Klepinger's son Hunter has severe epilepsy. Now, they shared this video with us and allowed us to show it to you because they want you to be able to see the kinds of terrible seizures this young child goes through. The Klepingers say their lives change precipitously when they saw Charlotte, a little girl in Sanjay's first documentary. She had a similar condition to Hunter, and Charlotte was being treated successfully with a liquid form of marijuana, the strain of which, by the way, is now known as Charlotte's Web. It's a available in Colorado, but not necessarily everywhere else. So what did they do? They lived in Georgia, and they picked up, and they moved Hunter to Colorado right away, so that they could start a similar treatment like Charlotte is undergoing. And they say that Hunter's seizures went from as many as 100 per day to sometimes only two per week. And I'm happy now to be joined by Dawn, who is in Atlanta, and Aaron and Hunter who together are joining us from Colorado. Welcome to all of you. And Aaron, I'd like to begin with you, if I can, please. I just wanted to get a feel from you as to how the treatment is going. The initial fact sounds incredible. Has it lasted?</s>AARON KLEPINGER, SON HAS SEVERE EPILEPSY: It has. It's actually improved over time, and from the very first dose we saw huge changes in our son, from decreased seizures to increased relaxation and happiness. It's been nothing but a miracle for us and a lot of people use that term kind of loosely, but for him, it's been absolutely fantastic, and he started -- he was having 24 minutes a week of seizures, and he's down under four minutes now. So it's been absolutely life-changing, not only for him, but for our entire family.</s>BANFIELD: Aaron, would you be able to sit with him like you are right now? I can see you holding his hand. He's just so cute. I was going to tell you, from one mom to another dad. Would you be able to sit with him right now and have this interview with me if you didn't have this Charlotte's Web?</s>A. KLEPINGER: I -- he would be much less relaxed than he is now, and very likely he would be having some severe seizures in front of you where he, you know, could go upward sometimes of 20 to 25 minutes, unstopping, just continuous.</s>BANFIELD: And Dawn --</s>A. KLEPINGER: So probably not.</s>BANFIELD: I know it's hard to travel and I know you're a long way away from your husband and your baby, but I wanted to ask you, there is so little empirical scientific study of what THC, even in the low, low doses that this extraction actually delivers to your child, but there is so little known at this point about what kind of permanent effect this could have on Hunter, that compared with what kind of permanent effect the seizures that he continuously had and the medications he was taking -</s>D. KLEPINGER, SON HAS SEVERE EPILEPSY: Well, we were a lot more -- sorry. We were having seizures constantly before and that affected his development globally across the board. And now he's more alert and paying attention more to things, and we think that, you know, cognitively, he's more aware. And so we think the medicine is helping more than anything. And the seizures -- having less seizures, cognitively, will help him out, I believe, over time.</s>BANFIELD: Is it in the back of your mind, though? Are you sort of thinking, look, at this point, anything -- anything to stop the madness, just to stop what our family is going through, to give this child some relief no one knows anything at this point with regard to what the seizures are doing to him, with regard to what the traditional medications are doing to him? At this point, we'll just take anything to get the least bit of relief for Hunter?</s>D. KLEPINGER: Right. The pharmaceuticals made his seizures worse. They made him scream constantly. They made him sleep constantly. So, we're actually seeing our boy awake and alert now for the first time in eight years. So, we're very happy with the results we've seen.</s>BANFIELD: Well, I'm really thankful that you shared your story and Hunter's story, and I mean it. He is cute as a button.</s>D. KLEPINGER: Thank you.</s>BANFIELD: Please thank him for us. Aaron, thank you so much, and, Dawn, good luck to you and I hope you continue to see the results that you so desperately deserve. It's good of you to join us today.</s>A. KLEPINGER: Thanks for having us.</s>BANFIELD: My pleasure. And I want to remind our audience, as well, that Sanjay has been doing some just stellar work, really stellar work. And I want to make sure you can tune into CNN tomorrow night at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time where Dr. Gupta is going to continue this groundbreaking reporting on medical marijuana. The special is called "Weed 2: Cannabis Madness." I highly encourage you to check it out. 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