[MUSIC PLAYING]
>>I want to do this film because I want people to know.
My name is Patricia Crone, and I have terminal lung cancer.
It's not a very good type of cancer to have.
I got metastases in my brain, and they will grow,
and they will eventually kill me.
So I am interested in anything over and above the normal
treatment that can help.
And this is where marijuana comes in.
I wanted not to get high, but to get well.
My cancer was diagnosed in November 2011.
My first reaction was kind of I see.
That's it.
I was fully prepared for death quite soon.
Then you start treatment.
And that, of course, completely ruins all your steely resolve,
now I must accept death, et cetera, et cetera.
Once you start treatment, you can't
go around saying, I'm going to die,
because you are in treatment.
Chemotherapy was terrible.
Undilutedly terrible.
They cut out a third of my lung and a lot of lymph nodes.
And after getting over the operation, I felt so well.
That's enough.
That's enough. [LAUGHS]
>>[LAUGHS]
>>I know it's impossible to feel that there's
anything wrong with you.
You get used to being alive in a new mode, which
is a new mode that's called the cancer mode.
I am a Professor of Islamic history
at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
All my work has been about the rise and development of Islam.
This book here.
This is the first book I wrote.
I wrote this with Michael Cook.
We are good friends.
I wrote this one with Martin Minds, and we lived together.
Martin died of cancer at the age of 47.
I may know a lot about ancient Islam,
but I know next to nothing about the modern world of marijuana.
I was a smoker once, but I have never smoked a reefer
or eaten a pot-laced brownie.
So I turned to the internet for help.
Somebody suggested that I try a marijuana concentrate
known as Rick Simpson's oil.
>>Most of the hemp oil I produce comes from indica strain.
Place the starting material, preferably good bud,
in a plastic container.
Dampen the bud material in the container with the solvent
you are using, then crush the bud material.
Drain the solvent from the starting material
and put it through a coffee filter.
An electric rice cooker boils the solvent
off very effectively.
Generally, I found a pound of good hemp--
>>A pound!
>> --will produce about two ounces of high-grade oil.
>>That's a lot of--
>>Ingesting this amount of oil over a two
to three-month period is enough to cure most serious cancers.
>>Ha-ha.
I'm a skeptic by profession.
And I know there are a lot of fake cures out there.
But that cannabis fights cancer is not just an old wives' tale.
What do we have here?
Cannabinoid endocannabinoids are possible preventatives
of common disease, including cancers.
University of Aberdeen, School of Medicine and Dentistry.
It's very good to know that there is this potential.
Oh, wait a minute.
Look here.
National Cancer Institute.
Possible effects of cannabinoids include
anti-inflammatory activity, blocking cell growth,
preventing the growth of blood vessels that supply tumors.
Laboratory and animal studies have
shown that cannabinoids may be able to kill cancer cells
while protecting normal cells.
That's the potential that we all want to have developed.
So I went to NYU to see a young doctor who wrote
his dissertation on cannabis.
>>OK, Patricia.
My name is Sunil Agarwal.
I'm a physician here at the New York University Medical Center.
I'm a House Staff officer in the Department
of Rehabilitation Medicine.
>>Maybe you could tell us, what are cannabinoids?
>>Those are the active ingredients of cannabis
that occur inside the human body and actually,
all-- many living systems, all the way down to sea squirts.
But somehow insects and other groups
didn't evolve these things.
But they're also called cannabinoids,
but they're called endocannabinoids.
There is this entire massive cannabinoid receptor
system in the brain.
>>What are cannabinoid receptors?
>>They're one of the most abundant proteins in the brain,
and all major organs can cannabinoid receptors.
And it turns out they have physiological importance
in mood, appetite, memory, inflammation, tumor regulation,
bone growth, immunity, even reproduction.
They're involved in cells communicating with each other
at a basic level.
So it's basically an ancient signaling system
that we've just discovered in the last 20 years that
has been shown in preclinical, animal,
and some early human studies to kill tumors by apoptosis, cell
death, stopping the blood supply to tumors
and preventing metastatic spread and sparing other surrounding
tissues.
There is no reason--
>>This sounds almost too good to be true.
>>But it's all factually documented
in The National Library of Medicine.
>>Now I've got to get myself a pound of cannabis.
Cannabis, AKA marijuana, hemp, weed, tea, pot, et cetera,
was once a commonly used American medicine,
which somehow turned into a dangerous, illegal drug.
19 states and the District of Columbia
allow Marianna for medical use, but federal law still
prohibits it.
And me getting caught with a whole pound of pot,
I'd be treated as a dealer, and that will mean dying in jail,
or, if I'm lucky, deportation.
I grew up in Denmark.
My parents have five children.
I finished school there, and I went to university
there for two years, and then I went to England.
I had a job in Oxford and then in Cambridge.
And then I went to America.
The winter went by, and for all my determination,
I still didn't have any cannabis,
because it's dangerous, and at the time,
I thought it wasn't realistic.
And I thought, I am hopeless.
I will never find this.
Just forget it.
My problems getting cannabis really started in April 1937,
when Congress proposed a heavy tax to make it unobtainable.
Cannabis-based medicines are already
losing out to regulation and modern standardized drugs.
But still, the tax was fiercely opposed by the American Medical
Association.
And that's really when the drug war started.
>>The Treasury Department intends
to pursue a relentless warfare against
the despicable dope-peddling vulture who
preys on the weakness of his fellow man.
>>To people who have studied the marijuana issue,
Harry Anslinger is the bad guy.
>>Dr. Jon Gettman teaches Criminal Justice
at Shenandoah University in Virginia,
and he's a former director of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
>>Harry Anslinger was the leader of the Bureau of Narcotics
and Dangerous Drugs, BNDD, for the '30s, '40s, and '50s.
He was as much a fixture in federal law enforcement
as J. Edgar Hoover was in the FBI.
Now, Anslinger was behind the Marijuana Tax
Act of 1937, the federal prohibition that
became federal marijuana law for the mid-century.
Yeah, he was overzealous with marijuana.
But there was ignorance at the time as to what the drug was,
why it produced the reactions that it produced.
From ignorance comes hysteria.
>>Marijuana, assassin of youth.
>>An incredibly influential article that Harry Anslinger
wrote about the horrors of marijuana.
The sprawled body of a young girl
lay crushed on the sidewalk the other day.
Everyone called it suicide, but actually it was murder.
The killer was a narcotic known to America as marijuana.
The article inspired the famous exploitation movie--
[GIRLS SCREAMING]
There was this idea that people would smoke hash,
then they were transformed into homicidal maniacs.
And marijuana was a recipe for insanity, he said.
>>Harry Anslinger thought it was a horrible, evil thing,
and whatever they could do to convince people not
to use it was fine with him.
>>Harry Anslinger's scare tactics worked.
Marijuana the menace won out over marijuana the medicine.
Already by 1942, cannabis was out
of the American pharmacopoeia.
Cannabis had lost all connection to medicine
and was now only a dangerous drug.
Spring turned to summer.
2012 was half gone, and I still didn't have any cannabis.
But I felt extremely well.
Then in August, I had another scan, an MRI.
Every time I had one, I get more nervous about the result.
It showed that I had more metastases in my brain.
It was very depressing, and they condemned me
to whole brain radiation.
And at that point, I suddenly became--
death became very, very real and very, very close.
It was a real-- I mean, they never gave me any date,
but it was very clear from their reaction.
I could tell.
I could tell the way that they'd written me off.
From experience, they know I am now a goner.
Whole brain radiation, it really scares me.
If I don't accept the radiation, then for sure,
sooner or later, I will become very badly symptomatic.
I will get seizures.
I will get paralyses.
God knows.
Sooner or later.
The question is, how soon?
How late?
With whole brain radiation, I would not
be able to work the way I do.
I wouldn't feel as well as I do.
So I began to think harder about cannabis.
And I've got to have it.
Dangerous or not.
>>Cannabis is not a dangerous drug.
If people want to smoke it like people
drink beer, what the hell?
>>Ernest Drucker is Professor of Public Health
and Social Medicine at Columbia University
and City University of New York.
>>The drug prohibition treaties that were made go back to 1911.
And the United States was the leader
in getting those in before it had even outlawed
these drugs in its own country, because it wanted to establish
itself as a moral leadership.
And there were a group of ministers
who were very-- a group called Moral Entrepreneurs, who
used the drug issue to then.
It was very successful.
Professionally-- personally, I have
known about cannabis for many years,
because it was the drug that everyone was using in the '60s.
[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]
>>(SINGING) Smoke two joints in the morning.
>>Things that used to be restricted
through poor minorities, marginal groups,
like jazz musicians, artists, and so on,
which had been the history of drugs, suddenly
new populations were using drugs.
What happened politically is that politicians
noticed that they could appeal to the white middle class
and the middle-class fear and could win elections.
>>In 1970, Congress overhauled our federal drug laws
and created the Controlled Substances Act.
And the idea was that some drugs had a potential for abuse
and therefore they needed to be controlled.
The amount of regulation was going
to be based on how dangerous the drug was.
Now, in that regulatory frame, there are five schedules.
Schedule I is the most restrictive.
That's for drugs with no medical use
and the highest potential for abuse.
And so heroin, for example, is a Schedule I drug.
So the Nixon administration sends Congress a letter.
And they said, we understand that marijuana doesn't really
fit in Schedule I. Probably doesn't even
fit in Schedule II, because it lacks
the high potential for abuse.
But we want you to put it in Schedule I now,
for the time being.
Then Congress should reschedule it,
or the administrations should reschedule it.
But no one ever did.
It was put there temporarily, and then it
was just ignored and left there, where it remains to this day.
>>America's public enemy number one in the United States
is drug abuse.
In order to fight and defeat this enemy,
it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive.
>>The so-called drug war had started.
The former Deputy Chief of the Los Angeles Police,
Stephen Downing, helped kick off the battle.
>>There's no metric that says this war on drugs
is successful.
The cartels, when I started, they didn't exist in America.
This year, they control drug trafficking
in 1,000 American cities.
Marijuana comprises about 50% of the drug market.
The health impact, let's say people that die.
Well, of course, nobody in the history the world
has ever died from an overdose of marijuana.
Several thousand people die a year
from heroin overdoses and cocaine.
I think today, pharmaceutical drugs
have passed up heroin and cocaine in deaths.
>>Oxycodones.
I got 150.
They can lead to stomach problems, to liver damage,
and even to death.
Much more dangerous than cannabis,
which is not being used.
It's not being developed.
So what do I do?
I'm going to ask my oncologist, Dr.
David [? Sohall, ? ] about my situation.
>>We spoke about it before, that this is probably not curable
at this point, and--
>>I really, really enjoy working,
as opposed to buying more time but not functioning.
>>The way you usually work or concentrate,
there probably will be some drop-off in your efficiency.
>>And that's permanent.
>>It can be.
But most people are quite functional after the radiation.
>>But they have-- they can't remember anything.
>>Well, they're not walking around like they don't know who
their family is or--
>>No, no, no.
Oh, no.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about my ability to do the work I'm doing,
which is the greatest pleasure of my life.
>>Yeah.
There might be some change in that.
>>Now, how long does whole brain radiation delay the onset
of symptomatic tumors?
At the moment, I'm not symptomatic.
It is calculated that I will probably
be in a couple of months, maybe three months.
>>I'm not sure that I have the report.
Let me see if I have the report.
>>They're probably three millimeters.
>>But right now, there are very small spots.
So there are six of them or something.
So in terms of where to go from here, let me start by saying,
the radiation is probably more effective at buying time
the smaller the amount of tumor that there is to treat.
>>But I have the plan for delaying for a month.
Then I want to ask you, do you know this study?
This is right thing relevant to me.
>>Ah.
Cannabinoid.
I see.
OK.
I don't know this study.
This is sort of in animal models.
So a lot of things that seem to work in animal models
don't work in the human people.
>>I know.
>>So that's probably about all I can-- [LAUGHS]
>>Yeah.
This is the National Cancer Institute,
which I assume you accept as a reputable source.
>>Uh-huh.
Yeah.
>>I want to try it.
But you don't smoke it.
You make a highly concentrated oil, and you eat it.
Doesn't sound very nice.
It probably isn't very nice.
But--
>>I'm not sure where you get it.
>>And I know.
That's my problem.
>>OK.
>>I-- how much am I risking by making this experiment myself?
That you cannot tell.
I can understand that.
>>Yeah, it's really hard.
>>I think it might be worth it.
I mean, from my point of view, it
might be worth just-- I mean, I'm a goner.
I haven't an awful lot to lose.
Yeah, yeah.
So.
>>Well, I wish I could say you really don't have anything
to worry about that.
But as you know, that's--
>>I do.
Yeah.
>>That's it.
You do.
>>I went up to my sister, and we started looking for cannabis.
It was that or whole brain radiation.
So in August 2012, right after my alarming brain scan,
I started to contact clinics in some of the states that
allow medical marijuana.
I was desperate to get Rick's oil or a pound of cannabis
to make it.
But only Oregon accepted out-of-state applications.
My sister found a very promising address in Oregon
for Portland Alternative Clinic, which
is headed by a real doctor.
But the clinic doesn't function like an ordinary clinic
or drugstore or pharmacist.
You can't just go ahead and buy the stuff.
You need to have somebody who will grow it for you.
2-3-5-5.
[PHONE RINGING]
Yeah, hello?
I got your number from the Alternative Clinic in Portland.
I'm looking for a grower in Oregon.
A person to grow cannabis for me that I
need for medical purposes.
>>I'm not sure there's anything we can do.
>>They said you would be able to get me in contact
with a potential grower.
>>We don't provide growers like that.
We don't really put people together as such.
>>And you can't give me any sort of contact number or anything?
>>We just don't have any.
It's not something we do.
Very good luck, ma'am.
>>Thank you.
>>Have a great day.
>>Thank you.
Bye.
They couldn't help, but I'm going to try again.
[PHONE RINGING]
>>Thank you for calling [INAUDIBLE].
This is Chris, how can I help you?
>>Yeah, hello.
I got your number from the Portland Alternative Clinic.
And they told me that you were somebody who might possibly
be able to give me a contact or a lead or something on how
to find a grower in Oregon.
Are you still there?
You really begin going into that panic state.
That state of fear.
I have this sense, you know, [GROWLS]
the grave is just ahead. [GROWLS]
I don't want to go in there.
There was yet another possibility.
New Jersey had only just passed the law legalizing marijuana
for medical use.
In order to qualify, you have to have less than a year to live.
But the card will be valid for two years, so-- [LAUGHS] they
seem to think it's OK if I survive for another year.
[LAUGHS]
A moot point anyway, since there is no pot available.
My experiment with cannabis was going nowhere.
And so I went ahead with the hospital plan
and saw a radiologist.
Prepared a mask so that they could pin me down
during the radiation.
I bought a wig.
I was completely ready.
But by then, something unexpected happened.
We had got hold of some cannabis.
So now I'm making this oil that Rick Simpson has the recipe
for.
It's quite a business.
You have to sieve it, then you have
to evaporate the stuff in a rice cooker
until you get a very tiny amount of oil.
[COUGHS] Whew.
Wait.
I have to remove myself from this.
I mean, the vapors from this, you can feel it just sort
of blech, slightly.
It's slightly sickening.
So the vapors are flammable.
That's why we're doing it outside.
I haven't really considered the possibility
that the police might come.
Of course, they could, in principle.
I mean, everything is possible.
Maybe they could smell the vapors.
But what?
A respectable old lady like me?
Why should they burst into my house?
[LAUGHS] Yeah.
What if.
You don't do that for the fun of it.
That's for sure. [LAUGHS] You do it
because you are determined to try anything you
can to avoid imminent death.
Of course, I instantly suffered a massive overdose.
And I got to feel extremely bad for a long time.
I took some-- I had these pieces of bread
with a bit of oil on it.
I mean, I don't know how much it added up to, but--
It was very weird.
It's not pleasurable at all.
At all.
So I am making tablets.
Hash tablets of Rick's oil.
I am eating this stuff.
Ah!
Too big.
One tablet a day.
It's disgusting.
It's totally like tar.
My hope is no growth of the metastases in my head.
I'm risking jail in order to save my life.
It's a pretty weird situation, in which
one has the sense that it's the government that's
trying to kill you.
It's very hard, though, to make the same size tablets.
If this were probably done by medical companies,
it would be a lot better.
I've been seriously overdosed.
It's not nice.
Definitely not nice.
And then it lasts forever.
As they say on some websites, you may feel as if you're going
to die, but you won't.
>>People don't die from the direct effects of marijuana.
>>Dr. Aron Lichtman is Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
at Virginia Commonwealth University
in Richmond, Virginia.
>>There's a range of side effects.
There can be panic attacks, and in fact, that's
responsible for a lot of the emergency room visits.
Roughly about 10% or so in their lifetime
will become dependent to marijuana.
And there's a certain percentage of individuals, a very small
percentage, that may show psychotic reactions if they
smoke marijuana.
Withdrawal effects include disturbed sleep,
distortion of time, disturbed dreams,
disorganization of thought.
But again, it doesn't cause death.
>>Pharmacologists at VCU have studied
the effects of cannabis for decades,
often experimenting with mice.
>>This mouse has electrodes implanted into its brain.
And then we can study the effects of drugs on behavior.
There's been a lot of research looking at cannabis.
Inside of cannabis, there's hundreds of compounds,
and there are upwards of 70 or more special compounds called
cannabinoids, and this includes delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol,
or THC for short, which gives people
the psychoactive effects.
The high.
>>The plant contains another interesting substance,
cannabidiol, also known as CBD.
>>CBD does not produce the THC-like high
in animals or humans.
It can have anti-seizure effects.
It's long been known to have anti-inflammatory effects.
It decreases nausea and vomiting.
And THC has a lot of medicinal effects, too.
>>Already, in 1975, BCU pharmacologists
published a paper on the startling discovery
that THC shrinks certain lung cancer tumors.
But the experiment ended right there
when the government cut the funding.
>>There was a war on drugs, and they had no idea, really,
how it worked.
When I got into this field in 1989,
they hadn't discovered the cannabinoid receptor yet.
>>And that's a whole new chapter.
It began in 1988, with a scientist
now at Wake Forest, Ellen Howlett.
>>I'm a PhD Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology
here at Wake Forest School of Medicine.
I had initially just assumed that everybody
knew how marijuana worked.
But at the cell level, it wasn't very known at all.
So my research was strictly at the level of the cells,
and we were able to identify this protein, then
the receptor.
This particular experiment is to try
to understand what cells are making what kinds of proteins.
Whether CB2 receptors or CB1 receptors
are present in the cells that we're working with. [LAUGHS]
>>OK.
>>Cb2 receptors are found mostly in the immune system,
and CB1 receptors are found mostly in the brain.
So these receptors are in many places in the brain,
and they send the messages through a signaling pathway
and neurons.
The knowledge about the endocannabinoid system
has been evolving over the last 20 years.
And now that we've got much more information
coming from the basic science, there
are going to be new avenues for treating diseases.
So I think this is just ripe for new pharmaceutical development.
>>I'm having a brain scan, an MRI, as they call them.
To show-- to reveal the state of my brain,
the metastases in my brain.
This will show whether it has any effect at all.
And if it doesn't, then I'm pretty much doomed.
It's quite something.
As I was in the scanner, I tried to play a film
with a bad ending because I want to imagine a bad outcome,
so I'll get used to the idea.
That way, you habituate.
You know, bad news, bad news, and I'll get used to it.
But every time I played the film with the bad ending,
the film had this way of coming to an end, and I wouldn't play.
And so I never really got to the end.
Whereas when I played the happy end film, there was no problem.
I'm expecting a call from my doctor.
It's very, very scary.
[PHONE RINGING]
Hello?
More of the same.
And so we are back to where we started?
I have the choice between whole brain radiation and death.
Uh-huh.
OK.
So that was disappointing.
The cannabis has not halted the growth.
But there is a sliver of good news.
My brain mets had grown very slowly,
and Dr. Andrew Greenberg, my radio-oncologist,
had expected the picture to look much worse.
>>But you can see one here.
There's a 6.9 millimeter nodule in the medial left occipital
lobe.
Here's another one.
Here.
>>Yeah.
Yeah.
OK.
But how many are there now altogether?
Eight?
>>I think seven, eight, nine.
>>Nine?
>>Nine.
>>Oh my god.
It looks bad.
>>But what has changed is the scan but not the person.
In time, what I've seen in the MRI is going to catch up to--
>>I know.
>> --the person whose MRI it is.
With that said, at this point in time,
there's no evidence of that.
And in fact, to my eye, you are none the worse for wear.
>>When you said they had grown very slowly,
could that be due to the cannabis?
>>Well, that probably speaks more to the genetics of one
person's lung cancer versus somebody else's.
Could it have an effect?
I mean, I can't sit here and say that it doesn't.
It's a relatively benign approach, if you will.
I don't want to say treatment.
I'm not sure it's a treatment.
>>No, I'm not sure either.
>>I don't have a problem if one goes by the philosophy,
first do no harm.
If it's not harming you, and it might be helping you--
>>Mm-hm.
The tumors grow very slowly, but whether they grow more slowly
because of the cannabis, well, that's a big issue.
I can't tell.
He can't tell.
But in the pathology lab at the Ohio State University Medical
Center, a group of scientists working with Professor Ramesh
Ganju are busy gathering more information.
>>So now in lab, we are trying to find out
the anti-tumorigenic activity of cannabinoids
against breast and lung cancer.
We wanted to see if they could be developed to combat cancer.
We incubate the cannabinoids with these cells
and then look at their growth potential, how do they grow,
and how do they proliferate.
And that way, it gives an indication that
if they inhibit the growth, that means it's killing the cells,
and the next step is animal models.
This is Katherine, who is doing most of the in vivo work.
And she can explain why we're here, actually.
Can you take out the mice and show her?
Actually, this is-- these are the mammary tumors over here.
We inject breast cancer cells in the mammary glands,
and then we can see over here, the tumors are growing.
We watch the progression.
We measure them regularly.
We use external calibers to measure the tumor volume
as it progresses.
We're looking for the edges of the tumor.
We basically do a cross-section.
We find the longest length, and you measure that.
And that is our longest length.
Yes.
Then you do the 90-degree angle, and you measure that.
And you're able to calculate the volume of these tumors.
Get it.
>>[MOUSE SQUEAK]
>>Thank you.
>>And this is the cannabinoid-treated mice.
So they started with the same tumor size.
So the smaller tumor is sitting right there.
>>That is quite dramatic.
>>It's a good indication of how the treatment is affecting it.
And then we do the 90-degree.
They're either shrinking, or they're progressing slower
compared to their vehicle.
There's a big difference.
>>We have initially shown that the plant-derived cannabinoid,
that's Delta-9-THC it has anti-tumorigenic activity
against lung cancer.
>>Normal lung.
>>Metastasis to the lung.
>>All the yellow is--
>>Metastasized.
>>And this one is--
>>Have been treated with these cannabinoids.
>>And now it's brown and healthier
and very little yellow.
This was the result of plant-derived cannabinoids.
I have also seen what synthetic cannabinoids can do.
And now, Dr. Ganju will show me a study
that used endocannabinoids.
>>OK.
We're trying to see the effect of endocannabinoids
on lung cancer growth.
We grow these cells in Petri dishes in-- these
are the lung cancer cells.
They form these colonies.
We incubate these cells with endocannabinoids at two
different concentrations.
This is lower concentration, then
you increase the concentration to see
all these cells disappeared.
>>Oh, that's pretty dramatic, yeah.
>>Here, the lower concentration, you
do see some cells still growing.
However, when you increase the concentration,
most of the cells are gone.
Lung cancer as well as breast cancer.
>>I'm still taking it, and I'm feeling all right.
I mean, physically, I'm feeling as well as ever.
I decided to postpone the whole brain radiation again.
I preferred life as I know it for as long as possible.
I have an errand run.
I need more cannabis.
Now I'm in Portland, in Oregon, to secure a legal supply of it.
>>This is organic.
It's 100% organic, and there is a huge difference.
And you can't spray it.
You can only use water.
Right at this moment, I have two other patients beside myself.
And in a town like this, we're, quote unquote, "weird."
People are willing to go the alternative route
to see if it works.
And of course, it works.
Come on.
It's the oldest medicine known in recorded history.
My messy house.
[LAUGHS] It's also a small place.
I can show you what I get out of this tiny space.
>>Can I?
>>Oh yeah.
>>Ugh!
Yeah.
Ugh.
Which one do you recommend for lung cancer?
>>Lung cancer.
You want something that's going to not-- you're not going
to have to smoke very much of.
>>No, I don't want to-- should it not
be-- it should be Rick's oil.
Do you know Rick's oil?
>>Yes, I make it.
>>You make it?
>>I do use it with-- I use Everclear
and then put that in capsules.
>>That's just what I want.
>>Yes.
And I have them.
Let me show you.
I have them.
Hold on one second.
I know exactly where I put them.
Oh, crap.
Where did I put them?
Oh, I know where I put it.
Never mind.
Hold on.
Yeah.
Well, I have them in a box.
Yes.
They're really good.
I weigh these things from start to finish,
and they weigh, each, a half a gram.
>>OK.
>>As many as you like.
I made 250 of them. [LAUGHS]
>>Oh, wonderful.
Mission accomplished.
But I'm still a criminal for crossing state lines
with marijuana in my suitcase.
Cannabis remains in limbo, both legally and medically.
Federal legalization may be too much to hope for.
But I just want cannabis out of Schedule I, where the Nixon
administration put it.
>>We had a report from the Institute of Medicine
about marijuana.
They basically said Schedule I curtails
research and development in cannabinoid drugs.
>>But even if you come up with a compound,
not from marijuana itself, that produces
any kind of marijuana-like effect,
industry is not interested in it.
And a lot of that is a carryover from the banning of cannabis.
>>So it's treated more dangerously
than the nuclear material.
It seems that way.
[LAUGHTER]
>>I took a trip to Washington to visit President Nixon's point
man on drugs and hoped he would make sense of it.
>>I am Robert DuPont MD.
I'm the President of the Institute
for Behavior and Health.
I was the first director of the National Institute on Drug
Abuse and the second White House drug czar in the United States.
Until 1971, it was almost totally law enforcement.
And in 1971, President Richard Nixon
changed American policy to what we
called balanced policy that included prevention, treatment,
and research.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIDA, started in 1973,
and it is the focus of research on drugs of abuse.
That was its mission.
The largest part of all the research
that had been done in cannabis has been funded by NIDA.
We spent more money on prevention,
more money on treatment, than any other country in the world,
by far.
My focus was on heroin addiction.
It wasn't anything to do with cannabis.
But in the background was a public interest
in-- as you called then-- marijuana or cannabis.
But I dismissed that.
I thought that was not a serious issue for somebody who
was interested in drugs, and I fancied myself
to be a serious person.
>>If cannabis is not a serious drug, why is it in Schedule I?
>>Schedule I is a drug that has no approved medical use.
And Schedule II is a highly abused drug that
has an approved medical use.
And so any drug that is widely abused is either in I or II.
And there is no now medical-approved use
for cannabis.
>>The government, on the one hand,
funds research into medicinal properties of cannabis.
On the other hand, it has put it on a Schedule I,
which denies any medical value.
So there is a little bit of a disconnect.
>>There's no disconnect whatsoever.
Not the slightest disconnect.
Schedule I drugs are researched all the time.
Being in Schedule I is no barrier to research.
That is a figment of the imagination of paranoid people.
It's not true.
>>It's back to the question of why is it on Schedule I and not
Schedule II?
This is what interests me.
>>But I just explained it to you.
Do not understand it?
>>No, I don't really understand it.
>>All right.
I am going to say it again.
They're both, Schedule I and Schedule II,
are seriously abused drugs.
You got that?
OK.
Number one is for drugs that have no medically approved--
but wait a minute.
By the Food and Drug Administration.
It's a very straightforward decision.
It's not whether somebody thinks it's medicine,
it's whether it's approved as a medicine.
And if it is, and it's highly abused, it's in Schedule II.
>>I know.
I know, I know, I'm sorry.
>>How hard is that for you to follow that?
>>No, I can follow that.
>>Thank you.
But the next time you talk to somebody,
say you don't have any doubt about it.
You know exactly why it's in Schedule I.
Because it was explained to you by me.
Right?
>>Government has cannabis on Schedule I,
but it also has a patent on the use of cannabis as a medicine.
>>What do you mean, a patent?
>>There is a patent taken out in 2003.
>>No.
For what?
I mean, I don't know what that would--
>>I'll show it to you.
You're a doctor.
You can understand it better than I can.
>>This says there's antioxidants and neuroprotectants.
I don't know what that is.
I don't understand that.
>>Have you talked about cannabis?
>>Yeah, I understand that.
But I don't know.
In that application, I don't know.
That's somebody who knows about patents.
>>I've got the patent right here.
Here I am in Washington, by the National Institutes of Health.
NIH.
More than 80 Nobel prizes have gone
to scientists doing research funded by this institute.
And one of those scientists who worked right here
and who got a Nobel Prize was Julius Axelrod,
who specialized in neurotransmitters, in how
cells talk to each other.
And later in life, he participated
in a study of cannabis that the government
deemed to be so significant and so important
that it took out a patent on the findings.
It says, in its abstract, that cannabinoids
are found to have particular application
as neural protectants in limiting
neurological damage following ischemic insults,
such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment
of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's
disease, Parkinson's disease, and HIV dementia.
And it has more about how it's good for people
who have undergone cancer chemotherapy
or radiation and other sources of oxidative stress.
We have here, it seems, an official recognition
by the US government that cannabis has medical uses.
In December 2012, after taking cannabis oil for four months,
another scary test.
I had a PET scan on my lung, ground zero of all my troubles.
So now I'm waiting for the result of the PET
scan I had last week, which will show me
whether the cancer has spread to somewhere else in my body.
Show--
>>There's nothing on your PET scan.
>>Nothing?
>>Mm-mm.
>>Nothing that's recurrent that we
can see within the chest cavity or anywhere else.
Your PET scan is completely negative.
>>That's wonderful.
It's funny.
It's slightly relieved, but not as relieved
as I thought I was going to be.
But that's pretty good.
>>That's great news.
>>Once it saturates and I will get to feel happier about it.
>>And it doesn't look at the brain.
>>I have nine lesions in the brain now.
And I'm still asymptomatic.
>>You'll follow up with a radiation oncologist
with your brain.
You know, I'm unhappy about your brain mets,
but I'm pretty happy about your PET scan.
>>There's a good chance that the cannabis had something
to do with it, and so I'm not going to risk anything
by stopping now.
I have no doubt there is an anti-tumor potential
in cannabis that should be explored.
But there are still no human trials.
So I continue to be my own human cannabis trial.
And often, it does feel like a trial.
My brain doesn't fire, and my memory really is very bad.
And it's very bad in a way in which I
think is beyond my normal old-age badness.
So is cannabis helping against cancer but hurting my mind?
Luckily, I knew where to find an expert
on aging brains and cannabis.
Gary Wenk is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
at the Ohio State University.
>>My research is in rats.
And my research for the past 30 years
has been focused on the aging brain.
What makes it age.
What I'm trying to do is figure out how do we reverse that,
or how do we slow it down?
That would be the key.
Most people would be happy just to slow it down a little bit.
One of the biggest changes, that wasn't really appreciated
until probably 15 years ago, was that as you get older,
inflammation develops in the brain.
And the principal properties of marijuana
were revealed over time as well.
And it turns out that marijuana is a very effective
anti-inflammatory.
So we've been looking for drugs that
are anti-inflammatories, that get
across the blood-brain barrier.
And everything I've tested has worked very well
in young brains, but nothing was ever effective in an old rat.
>>When we test old rats, they have really bad memory.
And the way we test that is in the Morris water maze.
Based on the decorations we put on the wall,
he learned how to find the hidden platform in there.
They get six training sessions every day for four days.
All right.
You're going to go swimming again, little guy.
I know.
[LAUGHS] A young right like him should
learn pretty quickly where the platform is,
whereas an older rat would have no ability to do so.
It would be great if he had found the platform for you.
Oh, he's so close.
[LAUGHS]
So we have a camera on the ceiling that automatically
tracks how he's swimming.
Older rats that are really not smart,
they'll just swim in circles until you take them out.
You have to basically rescue them.
But the young guys are very good at finding the platform.
Yes.
[LAUGHS] Good job, buddy.
So a normal young rat can find the platform.
A normal old rat cannot find the platform.
But when we give the older rats the synthetic cannabinoid,
they're able then to find the platform.
>>Our wonderful surprise was that marijuana actually worked
in an old brain.
First time.
First compound ever.
So that just was so exciting because it gave us some hope
that something would actually help
people slow the aging process when they were already old.
>>We know that these rats have recovered something.
They're more like the young rats than the old rats.
>>March 2013.
I have an MRI.
Every scan feels like a potential death sentence.
But I'm still around, and I think I'm ahead of the curve.
Last year I was invited to a conference at Notre Dame.
I thought, I can't really imagine myself
being well still, and able.
So here I am a year later, and I have reached the April
that I didn't think I was going to be able to reach.
So I don't think there's any doubt
that this cannabis has helped.
But what is missing is clinical trials
to show which are the best cannabinoids to use for this.
Which are the best strains.
So in Santa Monica, California, I
went to Greenbridge Medical Services
to ask Dr. Allan Frankel about the problem.
You have no idea what you get when you buy it
or how to dose it.
Dr. Frankel treats disease with plant cannabinoids,
but applies scientific accuracy to dosing and strains.
>>With the endocannabinoid system, the ECS,
was discovered, I believe, in '90, '91.
So it's nothing new.
The endocannabinoid system is the central controlling,
modulating neuroendocrine system for the body.
Without an endocannabinoid system, there's no life.
That's how integrated this is with everything else.
That doesn't mean that you have to have cannabis externally
to live.
However, it makes no sense to save, certainly,
the safest medicine ever for the people who
are getting ready to die.
>>I'm waiting for a call from my radiology doctor.
It's quite nerve racking.
[PHONE RINGING]
Very good.
Thank you.
Bye.
Report shows they have all grown.
But I got a small surprise.
It mentions that there was generalized progression
despite partial improvement at the medial right occipital
lobe.
Partial improvement.
The doctor didn't say anything about that.
So now I'd better take another look at all my brain
scans before deciding about whole brain radiation.
In nine months, from November 2011 to August 2012,
I had eight, possibly nine metastases in my brain.
In August I started taking cannabis.
In the next eight months, I had two plus a partial improvement.
It's pretty impressive.
But is it impressive enough?
Postponing radiation probably means faster death.
Acceptance, and my life as a scholar is most likely over.
I have always assumed that the moment I'm symptomatic,
I accept whole brain radiation.
I have these symptoms in my right foot,
where it suggests that I'm losing control of that foot,
and eventually, the whole leg.
And because of this hash, my memory really is very bad.
I work extremely slowly.
I can't remember where I put anything.
As if I'd had already had whole brain radiation.
So I might as well.
It's actually seven months since I was meant
to have whole brain radiation.
Seven months.
It matters.
It's a wonderful day.
I got an honorary doctorate.
I'm still well.
You still cannot tell that anything is wrong with me.
And it's been very nice.
So far, the going has been pretty good.
I think I have to say I've been lucky.
Cheers.
I'm going to the hospital for my whole brain radiation session.
I finally took the hated step because it became clear
that there was deterioration in my right leg.
Well, I will lose my hair, and I don't
believe I'll ever get it back.
I don't believe I can get well enough for long enough.
I have to say that not having had whole brain
radiation in August, when I was meant to have it,
it has given me time to get used to the idea that OK,
now I am on that slippery slope, down where you can see the end.
[DOOR CLOSING]
I completed 14 days of whole brain radiation,
and the effects aren't terrible.
I've lost my balance.
I'm confused.
My tongue is burning.
And I've lost most of my hair.
But the worst of it is that the radiation
had only a small effect on my tumors.
So I continue to take cannabis because it's amazing
what cannabinoids can do.
They affect just about every disease in the body.
That has to reflect the underlying endocannabinoid
system.
So maybe the endocannabinoid system
should be studied and unraveled, much in the same way
as the genetic code is being done.
It's a really exciting prospect.
It's too late for me, but I am still
thrilled by the idea of what they might come up with.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It's so nice.
So beautiful.
>>(SINGING) Sometimes it's just a matter of time.
You got left for goodbyes and you don't want to cry,
but it burns.
Sometimes it just comes down to the heart of the matter.
I want to feel better.
Could a plant be the answer?
Heal me.
I need a weed to wrap itself around me.
When I think about looking down, seeing you living without me.
You are my medicine, helping me with everything I need.
I'm here.
Heal me.
>>Always feel happy going out and gardening.
I think it's said, when your plants are dying,
then you feel deeply unhappy, but it's
the kind of emotions you need to suffer because of love.
>>(SINGING) I can feel you healing me.
I can feel you--