“Don’t I sound like mother of the year?” says one woman trying to control her daughter’s seizures.
Marijuana is viewed by some as a new wonder drug after reports that a strain called Charlotte’s Web, sold in Colorado, has reduced seizures in several children.
Tina DeSilvio is so determined to give her teenage daughter marijuana, she is mixing cannabis buds with 180-proof alcohol and letting the concoction evaporate into a sticky, olive-green substance to add to coconut oil.
Jenna, 14, cannot smoke marijuana, but she can swallow a half-milliliter of the oil, a few drops, when it is stirred into applesauce or yogurt four times a day.
“Don’t I sound like the mother of the year?” DeSilvio asks, chuckling. Her yellow kitchen counter displays a minutely calibrated scale, a dropper, a 9-by-11-inch glass baking dish and a clear, tightly sealed plastic container of pungent medical marijuana.
