Their children depend on CBD to treat epilepsy. The government funding bill threatens to cut off their therapy

Hemp flowers packed in containers sit on a table at a hemp extract processing and distribution plant in Binghamton, New York, on April 13, 2021. Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images/File

Lisa Smith’s 14-year-old daughter, Haley, had run out of options. She was having roughly two dozen seizures a day and had tried “17 or 18” different pharmaceutical regimens, different diets, and an implanted nerve simulator.

That was when Smith, in 2014, turned to the nascent but quick-growing world of cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-psychoactive component of cannabis plants increasingly used to treat epilepsy.

“She just basically existed. She didn’t really live. And after our first dose of CBD, she was able to stay awake. She started to learn,” Smith told CNN. Nearly 10 years later, Haley has about two to four s