Expansion helps patients waiting on Charlotte’s Web hemp oil

The closest thing Laura Oliver has to home in Georgia are pictures on her mantel…all because of what she keeps in her refrigerator.

“This is THCA,” Oliver said.

An oil derived from cannabis, she has been using it to help treat her 6-year-old son Tripp for severe seizures.

“Literally within the first month we saw cognitive and speech improvements,” Oliver said. “He just seemed clearer. I don’t know if that makes sense but his mind was working more fluently.”

Oliver moved this past spring to establish residency in Colorado, so Tripp could receive medical marijuana in the form of Charlotte’s Web, another cannabis-based oil that has gained world-wide fame treating children with epilepsy.

But Tripp is still waiting for his first dose of Charlotte’s Web.

“The waiting list is over 12,000 people now,” Joel Stanley said.

The lengthy list developed because the Stanley brothers’ greenhouse facility just couldn’t produce enough Charlotte’s Web.

But a recent reclassification of the plant to industrial hemp allowed the brothers to expand the operation to a farm in northeastern Colorado.

“Because we were able to expand, instead of taking a few hundred off the list, we were able to take off several thousand,” Stanley said.

Last week, that included the Olivers who have put in their order for the first dose of Charlotte’s Web for Tripp.

“To come try something that we have no idea if it is going to work or not, it’s all based on hope,” Oliver said.

Hope stronger than the desire for home.

But another 50-acre expansion in South American country of Uruguay may help that, too.

“There seems to be a legal distinction perhaps between hemp grown in the U.S. and hemp that is imported,” Stanley said. “Right now it is easier to grow the exact same plants and import it than grow it in Colorado and send it to other states.”

It’s the brothers’ hope to help those who need it where they live, not just in Colorado.

“By attacking this from many different angles and allow people to stay home we have so many people that have moved to Colorado, well people shouldn’t have to uproot their lives and move to Colorado to get help,” Stanley said.