North Lima couple moving to Colorado to get their son a treatment illegal in Ohio

NORTH LIMA, Ohio - A North Lima couple is uprooting their life here in the Valley and moving to Colorado next month in order to get their hands on a new marijuana oil.

Colorado is home to some of the country's most breathtaking scenery. However, it's not the scenery that's attracting the Shaffer's of North Lima to the Centennial State.

Marijuana is drawing the young family of four more than 1,400 miles away from the only home they've ever known.

"We didn't know much about it. We thought, oh the kids probably smoke it, you know. It was just another form of excuse to try marijuana. But then as we learned the stories and did our research we had a complete 180," said Dana Shafer.

Dana and Jeremy Shaffer, who both work in the medical field, have been told by doctors there's not much more that can be done for their seven-year-old son, Hunter.

He was diagnosed with a severe form epilepsy when he was just two and a half.

"Currently he is seven-years-old. He only functions at about age three because of the amount of seizures that he has is affecting his brain function," said Jeremy Shaffer.

"There's no other seizure medications for us to try. The ones he is on now, it's ruining his liver. His liver enzymes are going up every month that we get the blood work done. He has to get monthly infusions done because his platelets are usually critical low. So as the seizures continue, he will get to a point where he can't walk, he can't talk, he can't feed himself," Dana said.

Unwilling to let that happen, the Shaffer's have decided to move so they get their hands on Charlotte's Web, a cannabis oil, found only in Colorado AND made specifically for children who have diseases such as epilepsy, Parkinson's or cancer.

The oil contains only a trace amount of the ingredient that gives people a high. So, kids can't get stoned off the oil.

High amounts of another component found in marijuana, CBD, is what some scientists believe is slowing the progression of epilepsy.

Because it's still illegal in most states, little research has been done to prove that, although the Shaffer's are willing to take the word of the dozens of families who've gone before them.

"To watch him physically have a seizure and to shake and his eyes roll back and to not breathe and to drool and be incontinent, it is just not something you want to see as parents. It's been long, long years, but we're excited. We have hope that it is going to work whether it works just a little bit, we just have hope," Dana said.

The decision to move has been a very difficult one for the Shaffer's, but they feel it's exactly what they have to do, since medical marijuana is not legal in Ohio.