Idaho Mom Used Marijuana Butter To Treat Daughter’s Seizures, Had Kids Taken Away And May Be Going To Jail

An Idaho mother who used marijuana butter to treat her daughter’s seizures has had her children removed from her custody and may be facing a long prison sentence for child abuse, KTVB (Boise) is reporting.

Kelsey Osborne admits that she gave the cannabis concoction to her daughter “as a last resort.” Her three-year-old daughter, who has suffered seizures her entire life, was having a particularly bad one on the morning of October 8. The young girl was going through withdrawal symptoms from Risperdal, an anti-psychotic drug that is used treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She was seizing so badly that she was hallucinating, and nothing Osborne could do would get the seizures to stop.

“They would stop and come back, stop and come back with the hallucinations and everything else.”

Desperate, she did what she had heard that some other parents with children with seizure disorders have done: she gave her daughter marijuana. Specifically, she took a tablespoon of marijuana-infused butter, blended it into a smoothie, and gave it to the young girl.

“Everything stopped 30 minutes later.”

Kelsey Osborne is not the first parent to report almost miraculous results from treating seizure disorder in a child with marijuana-derived products. As Science Daily reported in February, for some patients, marijuana is emerging as an acceptable and effective alternative to traditional anti-seizure medicines, according to D. Samba Reddy, Ph.D., R.Ph., professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine.

“There was a lot of media attention about how medical marijuana is good for epilepsy. We became interested in finding out whether there was scientific evidence in the literature to support the claims of these people who have seen great benefits.”

It bears noting that, as of this writing, the belief that marijuana is helpful in treating seizures isn’t backed up by medical science. That’s largely because, as a Class I controlled substance (no medicinal value), it’s impossible for researchers to legally conduct peer-reviewed, clinical studies on the drug. All the medical community can do is simply report what patients have said: that marijuana-based products have produced almost miraculous results in treating seizures.

The State of Idaho, however, doesn’t see things that way. Marijuana is illegal there, and that’s all that matters, to law enforcement and child-welfare authorities.

After treating her daughter with the marijuana smoothie, Osborne took her to the emergency room. There, the young girl tested positive for marijuana. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare was called; Osborne’s two children were removed from her custody and sent into the care of their father, where they remain to this day. Osborne herself was charged with one count of misdemeanor injury to a child.

Kelsey Osborne’s daughter was taken out her custody by CPS after she illegally gave her cannabis for seizures. pic.twitter.com/yePcfBHWjI

— Devan Kaney (@DevanKBOI) November 3, 2016

Tom Shanahan, with Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare, points out a couple of differences between how Kelsey Osborne went about treating her daughter vs. how other parents are using cannabis to treat kids with seizures.

“Even in states that have legalized it it’s not legal to give to children. The cannabis that is used for children with epilepsy is called cannabidiol oil and it has had THC removed from it.”

Also, although parents in states that border Idaho, such as Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, purchase their pot legally, in Idaho that is not the case.

“Marijuana is illegal, period.”

Do you believe that Idaho mom Kelsey Osborne deserved to lose custody of her kids for treating one of them with marijuana?

[Featured Image by Swapan Photography/Shutterstock]