MARIJUANA THERAPY FOR AN 8-YEAR-OLD

Life just got more complicated for an 8-year-old boy and his mother who has
had great success battling his mental disorders with a doctor-approved
marijuana therapy.

The youngster's medical condition has improved so dramatically that he can
now attend public school, but school officials won't permit a school nurse
to administer his cannabis capsules and won't let him take the pills
himself on campus, the child's mother said.

"Other kids get their medication," she complained. But the drug her son
needs daily at 1 p.m. must be delivered by her personally, off the school
grounds, she said.

"It makes him feel he's not normal, that he's being treated differently. He
wonders why he's being targeted. He just wants to be normal," she said.

She hopes to persuade school officials to change their minds and allow the
capsules to be given on campus.

The woman, whose name is being withheld to protect the boy's identity, has
been treating her son with medical cannabis for the past year, at home and
at the private school he had been attending.

But in April, they moved. She presented her son's new school with the
required permission slip for students who need medication at school, a form
she and the boy's doctor signed.

The day before the boy was to report to his new school, however, a message
left on the family answering machine informed the mother that her son's
recommended medication could not be administered on campus.

So, she says, she's been forced to drive a round trip of 26 miles each
noontime to remove him from the school grounds, give him his capsules, and
return him to class.

Vicki Barber, superintendent of the El Dorado County Office of Education,
said she state law permits schools to dispense drugs only when they are
formally "prescribed" by a physician. The boy's doctor made a
"recommendation," and there is a difference, Barber added, between a
"prescription" and a doctor's "recommendation."

Because the district has a zero-tolerance policy, students are not
permitted to have in their possession or to self-administer drugs of any
kind, she said.