About Cannabis and Cancer (2019) Movie Script

1
(lighthearted music)
- And then you got to adjust your sound
for this voice, I'll
tell you that right now.
- [Cameraman] Sounds good.
- My name is Michael Lent.
I am a 67 year old man, retired mechanic,
arbitration manager of
automotive auctions.
I'm married, I have three
children, and four grandchildren.
- My name is Charles
Ray Mason, I go by Ray.
I met Eddie probably in 2016, 2017.
All of this happened in my
search to address a new diagnosis
of multiple myeloma cancer.
(soft acoustic music)
- My name's Eddie Funxta.
I was a all around neighborhood thug,
having fun, in the ghettos.
I wanted a way, an access out of it.
At the time, Proposition
215 came on the ballot,
and that's kind of been my
entire drive since then.
I'm kind of a plant guy.
Cannabis is one of my very loving plants
that I've done a lot of work with.
All the seeds, all the
plants, everything in general.
I'm pretty much a street botanist.
- My name's Ken Olson.
I'm 41 years old.
I'm a father of four.
I do that as a team, now,
actually with somebody else.
Not with my original partner.
- A lot of cancer in my family.
A lot of cancer.
My grandmother died of pancreatic cancer
and my grandfather of colon cancer,
an aunt, lung cancer,
another aunt, brain cancer,
another aunt, breast cancer.
My brother had thyroid cancer.
My mother, she had ovarian cancer
that she was treated for
and she went through surgery and chemo.
- I was a young teen mom.
I had a daughter at 14 years old
and I realized at that age
that if I smoked weed,
that my anxieties of being a mom
went away, and I was a better mom.
And I know that at that
time, it was very taboo.
You're not even supposed
to be smoking, period.
I honestly was struggling
'cause I had nobody
in my peer group to talk to.
Nobody had kids, it was me.
- I started in the early 90s, around '91.
That was the first time
I ever smoked a joint.
A friend of ours, some girl I liked,
I thought she was nice, pretty.
She pulled out a joint,
I took a hit of it.
It didn't do really much to me.
A couple years later
when I became a freshman
in high school, I hit a
bong for the first time
and it really put me
in a very unusual space
and I didn't know if I
liked it or if I didn't.
I just knew that I took
too much at the first time,
so I was kind of on the fence about it.
- So I felt alone and smoking weed
put me in a place where I
could actually calm myself down
and get on my child's level in such a way
I've never been able to do with anything.
And I was just honestly a better mom.
More in tune with her
and had a great time.
I didn't have to take
anything over the counter
or prescription wise that probably
would have damaged me.
(gentle piano music)
- I was a very bad kid in school.
I lived in the projects.
And so I was used to, I was
totally against authority,
teachers, cops, everything.
One of my teachers was like, "Hey, Eddie,"
my history teacher, she was like,
"You seem like a good kid and I don't want
"you to fail this class.
"You've been failing all
your classes for years
"and I think you have potential."
And she said, "If you go
to the registrar's office
"and just do anything
with any of the ballots.
"Get signatures, go door
to door, make phone calls,
"I'll pass you in this class.
"You get a piece of paper."
I said, "Okay, cool."
So I go down to the registrar's office.
Medical marijuana, they needed signatures.
So I said, "Hey, I'll do this."
They said, "All right cool."
So they stood me up at
my local grocery store
and I got signatures.
I was 17 years old.
The law passed, I passed my class.
You know, it was amazing.
I got a C in that class.
And so this whole wheel
just started turning about
what this movement was.
First, it was a couple of friends of mine
getting cannabis cards
and not getting in trouble
running around with a
couple of pounds of weed.
And that made a lot of
sense to me at the time.
I didn't feel like it was a bad thing.
In the projects where I was at,
people were selling crack cocaine,
people were selling
heroin and methamphetamine
and those drugs were terribly
ravaging the neighborhood
and causing huge disruptions in families.
My step-father was addicted to heroin,
slamming heroin with needles and stuff,
and so I was very, very immersed in
the terrible culture of drugs.
I wanted a way out,
and one thing I couldn't figure out was
how to get out.
We didn't many opportunities there.
The schools that we went to,
there's not a lot of counseling services
or any positive drives.
So I had these two influences
in my face at school.
I had these people that were thuggish,
running rough, had no
positive drive in their life.
And then I had these
kids that were getting
tremendous support from their family
and going to college and learning things
and so I was never against, you know,
doing better in life, and
so I started realizing like,
I used to tell my friends, like,
"Hey, you guys, you know
you guys are selling weed
"and drugs and stuff to each other."
Nobody's ever gonna get better than
who you're getting your stuff from
and we're only selling stuff to each other
here in these projects.
We're only gonna live in the
next project apartment over.
We're never gonna leave the projects.
We have to learn how to get money from
those people up there that
have money every week,
they get a paycheck.
What drives them?
What influences them?
And not drugs, like can we do art,
can we make music?
I became a musician.
I was an artist for years.
And those people kind of directed me
and pulled me out of the projects
and they showed me other,
and I got to see other things.
Those people were still
very much into cannabis.
And one of the things
I was very successfully
blessed with was an access
to a very, very good quality cannabis.
When the medical cards came in,
I just felt like it was time to get one.
So I got one, and it was
mostly just to protect me
from growing weed,
so that I can provide for my sons.
I started to meet patients,
started to meet people
and it made sense.
- I am an ER doctor who has
segued into cannabis work.
And still work in the
emergency department.
I work with patients with cannabis
only in the office at
the relief institute,
here in Santa Monica, California.
So I started all of this
about three or four years ago
when my two very close family members
were diagnosed with cancer.
Both of them were at different stages.
One had breast cancer and was young,
relatively young, a 40 year old woman.
And one was older in his 60s or 70s
and was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
Both of them were recommended
by their physicians
to start using cannabis products.
Both their oncologists say,
"You should probably smoke
pot, and it'll help."
And that was the end of the conversation.
And so when I went in
and discussed all of this
with the oncologist, the
same question kept coming up.
Well, what are they supposed to do?
How are they supposed to do it?
How often are they supposed to use it?
What is it good for?
What is it not good for?
What should we look out for?
You know, we don't want
her to be high all day,
'cause she's got little kids around.
How do we do this better?
And what ended up happening,
which, in the know, happens
for a lot of individuals
was we went into a "Pot Shop."
And talked to a Budtender
who sometimes gave us good advice
and sometimes didn't give us good advice.
So for the 40 year old female,
she did really well and
kind of figured it out.
For the 70 year old male, he didn't.
And that was where I thought,
if something so good is being
doubted by so many people
as being helpful, especially
in terms of cancer control,
or cancer symptomatic treatment control,
then why is it that we're
not able to do this better?
And why is it that the physician group,
you know, the medical clinical world
is turning their backs on these patients?
And that was what prompted
me to make a change
in my personal career and
my path in understanding all of this.
- When I was a sophomore in high school,
a good friend of mine got abdominal cancer
and his mom used to come to the projects
and buy an ounce of
weed from us every week.
And we just had a talk with her one time
and we said, "Why are you buying him weed?
"He doesn't even like to smoke weed."
She goes, "Well, his cousin came over."
And his cousin, my friend, Forest,
rest your soul, it's been many years.
He liked to drink and so his cousin came,
he's like, "Man, I don't drink liquor.
"I wanna smoke a joint with you."
and Forest was like, "Man, I can't smoke.
"I got cancer, I'm dying."
He's like, "That's why you
should smoke some weed."
So he gives Forest a hit,
Forest's got a appetite,
started feeling better.
His mom recognized this thing,
she came to us in the projects
and started buying him weed.
It still didn't resonate with me yet,
that these are the things
that were making sense to me,
of cannabis and how it helps people.
(slow piano driven music)
- She was 37 years old and
she had been complaining about headaches
for a couple of years and
starting to get lumps
in her throat and stuff
and went to doctors over and over and over
and every single one of them,
biopsies and everything,
and everything was fine.
That's when I got the call
that she was in the hospital.
And I rushed down and
told her that everything is gonna be cool.
(sighing)
I actually, I talked to Eddie
before I ever made it home to her.
- The movement just kept
thrusting me into this.
I meet a person with cancer
and it was almost the same story.
He was like, "I don't really smoke weed.
"I never really did, but the doctor
"suggested I seek cannabis."
And so I was like, "Okay, cool,
I can get you some cannabis.
"Here's some weed."
So we give him some weed
and then he introduced me to somebody else
and the door just started rolling.
I had flower, I had weed,
I was growing weed.
I was facilitating
cannabis to these patients.
We call them patients unfortunately,
'cause that's how they
recognize themselves.
So I started going into the homes,
I started going into the
houses and hospitals.
And people were just asking
me if I can bring weed.
And I was like, sure, I'll bring weed.
And see if this happens.
A drastic change one day was
when I went to the hospital
and one of these people,
this is the early 2000s,
they asked me to come
help their loved one.
So I go into the hospital
and I bring in a joint.
And I get ready to pull the joint out,
get ready, and the guy, barely alive,
and he's like, "No, no,
what are you doing?"
Everybody in the hospital room's like,
"What are you doing?
"You're gonna blow up this hospital!
"There's oxygen in this room."
And I was like, "What
are you talking about?
"We breath oxygen all the time."
And they're like, "Hey,
stupid from the ghetto.
"You need to learn something
if you're gonna come in here
"and try to help these people.
"He can't even breathe, he's on a breath,
"on a respirator, how are
you gonna give him weed?
"How are you gonna give him this?"
And I was lost and
completely sitting there
in a world of failure.
And instead of running
and dealing with people
that only wanted joints,
I just expanded my thoughts
and started figuring out things
and exploring and diving into other
utilizations of cannabis, besides a joint.
I felt like a joint and a bong was
what a lot of people were
attacking and going after.
They didn't like the hippie
culture smoking a joint,
they didn't like the glass
culture for making bongs.
And so it made sense to me of like,
"Okay, well if I'm gonna
help these sick people,
"maybe I need to stop coming
in there with joints."
So we learned how to make tinctures,
and we started making tinctures.
And then I started going to hospitals
and I started giving these droppers
into people's tongues.
And a lot of them were getting better
and starting to feel better.
And so this is the early 2000s
and 2000, 2001, there's no information,
there's no Oaksterdam University,
there's no internet.
I mean there was internet,
but it was really scarce
and farce information.
Couldn't find anything that was positive.
I just kind of felt that people needed it
and the movement of the
medicine was more important than
the people that are the movement.
The movement's gonna be there
whether I'm here or not.
And we learned that with
Jack Herer and Dennis Peron.
They're gone and the movement
is still very strong.
And so I just learned that
putting the plant on the pedestal
and running with that
pedestal of the plants
is what the benefits of all this is,
and creating these products
and listening to the people
and respecting the plant,
the information will
just fall into your hands
to the point to where we started creating
water hash, bubble hash, and
we started making concentrates
and learning what is these
products doing to people
when we're using them.
Coming all the way down to the line
where we started creating suppositories
for liver cancer patients
that had no access.
They couldn't eat, take anything orally,
they couldn't smoke, they couldn't eat,
and how can you give them an edible,
how could you give them a tincture?
That stuff doesn't work.
We have to utilize,
we have to get cannabis into people,
'cause we know it heals.
And so we started creating suppositories
and giving these to thousands of people.
I've helped over 2600 people pass.
And that's what I thought
medical marijuana was
at the beginning of my years.
I thought it was helping dying people.
I was going to the hospice,
was going to home care,
was doing these things
and I was watching these people pass away.
- She was originally
diagnosed with lung cancer,
that it metastasized the brain.
By the time we saw any
pictures of any of it,
before any treatment was
started with the cannabis,
she already had eight
lesions in the brain.
We started the treatments
and within 30 days,
we got her up to a full gram, which
it was probably a little
bit less than that actually,
'cause I remember thinking
wow, we got her to a place
where normally people take a month plus
to get to that point so
that they don't just end up
in a comatose state and
sleeping all the time.
And she definitely was tired,
but she didn't sleep all the time.
And her body started healing
and reacting very well to the medicine.
And we went in for a scan,
and she actually had gone down
to three lesions on the brain.
And we were completely excited,
we went and had to go for
a doctor's appointment,
and we went in, we actually sat first
with the doctor's assistant.
And when she saw the results,
she was ecstatic with us and happy
and she actually condoned
and asked for us to persist
in the cannabis treatment,
where her own boss didn't agree with it.
And all he would say is, you know.
"This is not gonna do anything for her."
And even when he saw the scans,
having five less lesions in the brain,
he continued with the negativity
and really just pulling her down,
so she went from a place of being positive
and actually healing to
pulled right back down
to this place of negative frequency.
Just hopelessness instead of knowing
when she literally, she knew
it, that she was healing
and she told people about
it, she was excited.
How on earth could you put
something like that out there
and to bring upon her your hopelessness
of the situation?
Again, I really feel that
at the end of the day,
when Danielle finally
succumb to the cancer,
it was because she got to a point
where she no longer believed.
(gentle acoustic music)
- My mom was diagnosed with brain cancer
many years after she had gone
through the ovarian cancer.
And when they found it,
she had two different tumors in her brain,
and they sent her home on hospice.
- I got asked to come to this home
and I walk in the house
and there's hospice, there's
a couch in the living room,
there's a bed in the living room
and the gentleman's in the bed.
And this gentleman was very alive
when I walked in that door.
And he told me he was military
status, his whole veteran,
this long list of what
he's done in the military.
And then he asked what was I doing there.
And I told him "I was called
to come and help you."
At the time I had dreadlocks
down almost to my butt.
And so he was like, "Who are you?"
I was like, "Well, I was
asked to come and help you."
He goes, "You don't like a
doctor, you're not a doctor."
And his daughter goes,
"Dad, I asked this gentleman
"to come in here to help you."
He goes, "You bringing that weed stuff?
"I told you I'm not
taking that weed stuff,
"not in my house, not on
my clock, not on my time."
And she's like, "Dad, this is my home.
You're here, I wanna
help you, I love you."
And he's like, "I'm not taking this."
Three hours later he was dead.
So you see, I'm in this house,
this gentleman's laying
there, dead on the couch,
dead in his thing, and his daughter
and his two sons are sitting there.
We're watching this in a
room of complete silence.
Death is a heavy, heavy feeling in a room.
I sparked a joint, I lit the joint,
took a couple of hits,
and I passed it to the daughter.
And the daughter said, "I can't do this.
I'm a teacher, I can't, I can't."
I said, "You asked me to come
and give this to your father,
"I couldn't have done any,
"and even if he would took a hit,
"he wouldn't have been alive right now.
"He's too far gone.
"You know what this is for?"
Right there in that
moment, it realized to me
what cannabis was important for.
It's for the people living
right now that wanna stay alive.
The people that need to be alive,
the people that have jobs,
have family, have friends.
Have motivation, inspirations,
people that wanna go in the garden,
people that wanna paint cars.
People that wanna, you know, go play golf,
or miniature golf,
or people that wanna go
sit down and have a meal
with their friends and
family and laugh and joke.
That's what cannabis is for.
It wasn't for this debilitating disorder
that people who were dying
at their last breaths in bed
and hopefully we can
give another 10 minutes
so we can wait for Billy Bob to come in
and give them a hug.
I've watched death so many times over
and I watch families completely
disintegrate after death.
I've watched people fight over,
"Where did he bury the money?
"Did he tell you where he has the money?
"Did she tell you where
the trust funds are?"
The other people aren't
really cared about.
And so in that, I just learned that
it's the living people
right now that are trying to
understand purpose for their life,
have a good night's rest.
Not be anxietal, depressed,
full of road rage.
That's what's the most
important about cannabis,
it's all day moments, every day things.
It's not PTSD, I mean there's
no such thing as PTSD.
Post-traumatic stress disorder?
No, it's PTLD, and every human
being on this earth has it.
It's post-traumatic life disorder
and we're all suffering from it
and one thing I've
learned that have happened
to almost 3000 people pass away,
we're all terminal.
Nobody's making it out alive.
And we all need to just
be appreciative of ourself
as the moments that we're here.
And being okay with right here, right now.
And if right here, right
now I interact with somebody
that is in chemo therapy,
going through radiation,
or has AIDS, or some other
debilitating disorder,
and I give them size of
a grain of rice of this,
and I tell them to take
it when they go to bed.
You don't take it in the afternoon.
You've never smoked cannabis
in your entire life,
I don't tell you to
take this in the morning
when you wake up with your
cup of Joe, no, I don't.
I tell you take this at
night before you go to bed,
take the effects while
you sleep through it.
Don't get anxietal and freak out.
Don't have a conversation with yourself,
feeling like you're in a
psychedelic experience.
Go to sleep, take it, go to bed.
You can get a full night's rest
and 99.9999%, the nine's keep going,
every single person I interact with,
the first thing they tell me is
they don't have a full night's rest.
That's the first thing this thing does,
is recharge the body
and give you full rest.
As soon as your body
gets rest and recovery,
your body can start healing.
Most people, I tell them,
you go to bed, let's say
at 10 o'clock at night.
By one in the morning, I
don't care who you are,
you can be in a dead sleep,
your eyes open up, you wake up,
and the rest of the time
until your alarm goes off,
you're tossing and turning
and trying to figure out
how to get back to sleep.
You fall back asleep five minutes
before your alarm goes back off.
(gentle piano music)
- Friends of mine,
that I buy my weed from
and various things,
told me about Eddie
and I got on the internet
and I researched him,
I found him, I messaged him,
I met him and he started
taking care of me.
With his RSO, which you know,
you put this stuff in a capsule,
you take it, and you go to sleep.
You sleep like a rock,
it's amazing.
- Everything I research
made me understand that
if I didn't change my diet
and try to find something
that was going to help me
eliminate all the pain that I was in,
that I wouldn't be here much longer,
because it became too unbearable to just
get up and go to a job.
In that process, my doctors told me that
there was a pain clinic and it was
go see a counselor or employ
your sister in counseling
to talk about all of this that's going on.
And just one medication after the next
and one day I looked up,
and I had like 17 different medications
and I just wanted to
do something different.
- My first experience with
helping somebody other
than myself was my mother.
She was diagnosed with
cancer in October of 2016.
I actually had told her instead
of taking sleeping pills
and things like that, I was
offering her to smoke weed,
'cause that was what I knew to do.
But when she was diagnosed with cancer,
I was kind of at a loss.
I knew that from experience
of watching other people
going through cancer that chemotherapy was
destructive and very, very sad and harsh.
But when she was diagnosed,
we didn't know exactly
the extent of it, and then
couple of weeks later,
I found out that she was
terminal by then already.
They gave me her three
and a half months to live.
I had basically decided within me
that I didn't want her to go
through with the treatments,
but if that's what she
wanted to try to do,
as far as what western
medicine was telling her, fine.
But I was asking her to
try cannabis as well.
And then she was, "But how?
"How much?
"What do I take?"
And I said, I don't know.
I basically didn't know.
I just went out to a dispensary
and was like, "Hey, my mom's dying.
"And I come here every
week, five times a week,
"to buy my own weed to smoke.
"You guys have anything
that my mom could take
"that would help her live
"or at least like feel better?"
And they couldn't answer anything.
Nobody knew anything.
"Well, we have this and we have that.
"And this is $90, and this $150."
I'm like, "Is the $150
stuff stronger, better,
"make her better faster?"
"No, well, we don't know."
"How much do I give to her?"
"I'm not sure."
And then CBD was the cure all too.
That was the other thing.
"You just need to give her lots of CBD."
And I'm like, "Well, how much, what form?"
You know, do I rub it on her body?
Do I put it in her mouth?
Like what exactly do I do?
And it was scary 'cause they
were willing to take my money
but they weren't willing
to tell me what to do
with this thing they were
giving me for my money.
- They do believe, in some of the studies
they say that smoking a joint,
when it gets to the medicinal aspects,
you're getting anywhere between 12 to 16%
cannabinoid absorption.
- The endo cannabinoid system
is complimentary to cannabis,
which is why it got named as partially
endo cannabinoid system.
Cannabis, in and of itself
is hundreds and hundreds
of different chemicals that we are now
starting to pick apart and take a look at
on a much deeper level.
- So you're smoking a joint,
some of the best weed there is.
And you're still, even
though you're 100$ stoned,
and 100% medicated or high,
you're only getting up
to 16% of cannabinoid
absorption in your body.
If that's trying to kill cancer,
that's not gonna do anything,
when people take up to
a thousand milligrams
of concentrated oil to battle the cancers.
So that's smoking it,
then there's topicals.
Topicals come in there also,
and you get anywhere from, they believe,
a 16 to 24% absorption with topicals.
Edibles, they believe you
get a 40 to 52% absorption.
Rectally, you get from
86 to 91% absorption.
But when you get in to suppositories,
you can't just make it
like you make ganja butter.
You have to use a refined oil,
which has to be broken
down in certain ways.
This is a full plant extract meaning that,
they cut the whole plant down,
we soak the whole plant in a solvent,
and whatever's left after
we remove the solvent,
is the pure product.
We keep it at a certain
volatile heat levels,
so that it doesn't burn
off certain properties
and that's what the entourage effect is.
Nowadays with all the
legalization going on,
the vape carts, that's called distillate.
And so distillate is actually a step after
you make the NHO, RSO, the
full plant extraction oil
is in a solvent.
And then you take that solvent
and what I do, is I
just remove the solvent
and what I have left is my product.
What other people do is
once you remove the solvent,
they take this product,
they put into a machine,
they call it a mantle.
They heat that up with vacuum pressure,
steam and cool, cold air,
and they collect what's called distillate.
And that's an isolation of THC.
You are now burning off all
the entourage components,
everything is gone now,
and all you're removing is the THC.
And so that's what everybody's using
in the vape cartridges and stuff,
which I believe is a generic high.
I've had no medical benefits
of anybody feeling any better with them,
unless they're having headaches,
need a quick appetite boost,
or a recreational setting
where they just wanna smoke
something real quick and move on.
But when it came to all around healing,
you have internally eat it.
You have to ingest it.
And I've stayed away from
making edibles and stuff,
because a lot of it had sugars,
and preservatives and those
are the things that were,
preservatives were preserving the cancers
and all the anomalies,
and the sugars were just
feeding the cancers and the anomalies.
And so I just figured
instead of me making edibles,
I should create a pure concentrate oil
that if you take a very, very tiny amount,
it goes a long way.
So instead of you having
to have medicated brownies
or medicated cookie, I am now medicated.
Whatever I eat is medicated now,
I can have medicated lasagna,
I can have medicated burritos,
I can have medicated tortilla chips.
I can have medicated salsa,
because I am medicated.
So I am the standard, I
don't need all these other
outside anomalies messing with me,
especially when you have diabetic patients
or people that are on harsh, strict diets.
They just need to take
a pure form of the oil.
And I feel like that's
the best way to do it,
instead of using all this extra stuff
that just cause food allergy problems
or I have people that
are making the oil now
and putting all kinds
of essential oils in it.
And no, it just needs to be the oil.
Just stick to the plant,
it comes to their face like
they're designers again.
And the plant has been
healing for thousands of years
without our effort, it's
gonna be here on this earth
for thousands of years after we're gone.
I've been using this medicine for years,
because I was addicted to
opiates after I broke my back
and they told me I had stomach cancer.
And so I went after all
these things myself,
because I didn't believe in their lies,
I didn't believe in the tools
that they were gonna show me
that I watched so many
people lose their hair,
lose their teeth, get
their throats burned out.
They call it a burning in radiation,
when they actually zap the wrong part
and you get these burn blisters.
And I've helped people
with Agent Orange issues
to AIDS, dementia,
ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease,
the list can go on forever.
But at the end of the day,
it's poor diet, negative efforts
and a negative community around people.
And once you give them a
positive, good night's rest,
and you get rid of all those ailments,
they wake up the next
day, they eat better,
they wanna do things and
have fun with their life.
- I had to go do my own research.
I sought people in my surrounding,
there's a group on Facebook called,
I Love San Bernardino.
And I live in the city of San Bernardino,
and I was like, well,
why not reach out to the community
and see if there's people
within my community
that can help me, or know somebody
who might be able to help me.
And that's exactly what I did,
I said my mom's really ill.
I have all these things that
they gave me at the dispensary
and I don't know what to do with it,
can somebody send me an angel
who can just say this is
how much you give them?
Or this is how much she shouldn't take,
or don't give her that.
Somebody just give me some information,
and a gentleman by the
name of Robert Porter,
he was like, "I know somebody.
"He doesn't live here right now,
"but I'm gonna contact him,
"he's in town, and I'm
gonna talk to him about
"what's going on in your situation
"and he might be able to help you."
And I was like, thank you.
Anything's better than nothing.
Within a few days, he said
he had spoken to Eddie,
and he said that, "I
told him about your mom,
"and he gave me some medicine,
"and you're gonna give it
"and on the back of this package
"it says how to administer
it to your mom."
And I was just like, "What? Wait, what?"
Okay, crazy, okay, cool.
And I was excited because like,
I was like, I got an answer.
It's not the answer, but it's an answer.
And I might be able to help her.
Within 15 minutes of
administering the medicine
to my mom, she was happy
and my one and a half year old niece
was able to interact with her
and it didn't make my mom sad,
or in pain, because she
was just in a complete,
she was like, and then she pulled me aside
and it was like,
"Cannabis is what's gonna
cure people, Amethyst.
"Don't forget that."
'Cause she could feel it.
She told me, "When you give me,"
I was giving her dilaudid
on every four hours,
and then I was giving her fentanyl patch
and I was giving her so many medications
and I put those things on her,
and I watched her go from chill to just
watch her feel like she's scared.
"Mom, are you okay?"
"No, I feel not okay.
"I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die."
I'm like, "Mom, you're not gonna die.
"I'm just making you feel out of pain."
"No, that's not what I feel though.
"I feel out of pain, but
I feel like I'm dying."
And she said with cannabis it
brought life back into her.
And so for me, that right there,
was all I needed to know.
Like I knew my mom wasn't going to live,
but I knew that she had
life in her before she died,
and so she was better
than if she was on opiates
and so that was probably
the best healing for us
as a family, because she
didn't wanna leave us
in turmoil and hurt and having a void.
And she wasn't, when she left,
we were all there with her,
and we knew she went well,
because she was in a state of mind
where we knew she was okay.
(melancholic piano music)
- This isn't an isolate,
I don't take it and just take THC out.
No, we've learned that the
entourage effect of this,
all the constituents in the plant
is what benefits the body.
Our body has,
it's a whole unit of
symbiotic relationships
and cannabis is like the conductor.
- In the mean time, I've also
had a chronic pain problem.
I have a bone spur on my lower vertebrae.
I had been on gabapentin,
Vicodin, Flexeril,
I had a nerve stimulator
that I wore on my back.
Well, now, I had these edibles
that I'm making for other people,
and I thought, well, you
know, I'm gonna give it a try.
First I went off the Flexeril,
I had already gone off the gabapentin,
I was like, I'm sleeping good at night!
And it was, I never went
after this for myself,
it was all about cancer.
I wasn't trying to help myself,
but it's helped me.
- It made me remember everything
I ever wanted to do since I was young.
I always told my mom,
"I don't know what I
wanna be when I grow up,
"but I wanna help people."
And therefore, I was like,
okay, so she's basically
explaining to me that I need to
inform people, just inform them.
Give them some knowledge
and if they take it
and they run with it, great.
If they don't, then they don't.
- Okay, before I met Eddie, I panicked.
After I met Eddie, I got a little better.
Because now I'm applying this
native healing oil to my gums
and I'm doing baked goods.
I'm doing other products
that started relieving
the pain in the back.
You know, and I'm like, okay,
I might have something here.
That gave me hope, man.
- Eddie had reached out to me, and said,
'cause I take the medicine myself.
My wife passed away two weeks
after my mom passed away
in an accident, a block up
the street from my home.
And it put me in a
depressive, depressed state
where I couldn't sleep,
I started taking the medicine myself.
'Cause he told me,
"You need to take this so you can sleep.
"And it'll give you the
right kind of sleep.
"And it'll help."
With that, I was able to take the medicine
and find out, like,
this is what I wanna do.
I wanna help people that are like me.
And like my mom.
And so what I started
to do is I talked to him
and he told me, "I have this medicine,
"and it's available to people,
"but people don't know about it."
So what I did is I would take his pamphlet
and I would see people
that needed the help
and I would explain to them how this helps
and this is who you need to contact.
- Now, to get onto somebody
that was really helped by this,
my husband, he had quit work years ago,
he had a mental breakdown,
he's been diabetic since he was a kid.
Bad arthritis, he's had
a few heart attacks,
and he was diagnosed with dementia.
I didn't even think to even give him
any of the edibles and stuff
that I was working with
or any of this oil, even though I thought,
you know, I thought this really is
a tool that everybody should have
if they want it,
if it's gonna help them.
But I didn't think about it helping him,
because he's already confused,
you know, I'm not gonna make it worse.
I forgot to order his sleeping medication,
and the doctor was just getting ready
to put him on, it's the
step just before hospice,
because I told her, I said
I am just overwhelmed.
I said I cannot take care
of him the way I need to
and take care of my grandson,
who I had and the grand-baby
that my daughter had.
And I was just totally overwhelmed.
And she says, "Well, we're
gonna put him on pre-hospice.
"And get you some more help."
Well, I ran out of sleeping pills for him,
and he's just like frantic,
"I'm not gonna sleep,
I'm not gonna sleep!"
So I gave him a cookie.
I said here, have this.
The next morning he woke up and he said
he slept so good, and that he felt so good
that he wanted to try that again.
Well, now, he's totally off of Trazodone,
he's off most of his psych meds,
he was on Prednisone every day
for the horrible pain of
arthritis in his joints.
He can't lift his arms up,
because his shoulders are frozen.
Oh God, he's fallen and broken his hip,
you know, he's just a mess.
He is off Prednisone completely
for the first time in years.
His diabetes is way better controlled
and his mind is working again.
He takes care of all his
own doctors appointments,
all his prescriptions,
he's picked up chores
back in the house again,
he does the dishes,
he does the laundry.
Yeah, he's not real good about
separating the whites out,
you know, but he converses
like a normal person.
He remembers where we're going tomorrow.
This was his miracle and my miracle.
This was it.
To be afraid to give it to him
because I thought it would
make him more confused
when he already had dementia,
and to have it be what has
helped his mind recover,
because he's not on all
those toxic drugs anymore.
I just think it's a tool
that we should all be able to
use if we need it.
It should just be available to us.
I think it's a damn shame
that the government has
done things the way they have,
when they really need to be helping people
not hurting people and not
denying them what can help them.
- I watched cancer with double
mastectomies in my family
and I have watched throats,
voice boxes come out.
What am I gonna do now?
So I just got serious
about being anti-chemo.
And once I went and got on YouTube,
my world changed.
- You know, Ray is like a ray of sunshine
for all his friends and,
I mean he'd walk through the hospital
and just seeing him
would make people smile.
And for me to lose this
ray of sunshine to cancer
was just horrible
and I said, "Whoa, Ray, Ray, Ray."
I said, "I'm gonna look some stuff up."
I said, "Do you wanna try this oil?"
I printed up a bunch of
stuff for him to look at,
I said, "Let's go get cards
and let's go find this oil."
We went from store to
store and we couldn't,
we couldn't find this stuff.
We couldn't find it at all.
We saw lots of just marijuana bud
and all kinds of different products
and some edibles and stuff,
but we just couldn't find it.
And so I told Ray, I said,
"Well, I'll make it."
- I suggest you grow
your medicine yourself.
I suggest that you make this yourself.
You don't need anybody's help.
I'm no better than you,
you're no better than me,
we're all one.
This medicine does show us that
we all come from the same root,
and we all thrive on the same stock.
And we all have different leaves.
Just grow, you have to grow
and you have to not let
anybody be in control of you.
And if you, like Rick
Simpson's told me to my face
a lot of people are
brainwashed by the white coat.
Be careful of what the doctors tell you.
They're selling a profitable industry.
We want you to learn how to grow this
in your backyard using only water.
And making this medicine
after four months of growing it.
And you should be able to make enough
to hold you over for a year.
As long as you don't have
a terminally ill situation.
And if you do, maybe your friends
will wanna grow some weed for you.
It's pretty fun to do.
- You know, they have
with the marijuana oil,
the extract, they have
Rick Simpson shows a thing
on how to make it.
But of course, then you have
to get the product to make it.
And you know, you wanna make sure
your product is good product.
But I did, I found product, Ray bought it,
I made the oil and got
him started on this.
- Before the diagnosis,
I was enduring the pain
and just taking the prescriptions.
It was trying to think my
way through all of this
and then getting so overwhelmed
with so much information
which always had my head spinning.
I was going a bad path
and that's where I had to
really change my life at.
Even going into this avenue
where I started using all
these wonderful products
that Eddie had to offer
with the Native Healing Oil,
you know, working out all the time
and I was killing my stomach
because I was coming up with hemorrhoids
and taking all kind of supplements
and not knowing how to
flush my body properly.
It just one thing after the next,
I was becoming a detriment to my own self,
because I was trying so hard.
But this got me on a path to
slow it down a little bit.
Because it gave me some hope.
- I would say within the first 30 days
is when I actually started seeing it,
and I've been going to the skin doctors
and having surgery done.
I have a cream at home,
it's a jar like this,
that I put on my arms
every night, twice a day.
Once in the morning, once at night.
And it peels my skin,
so it can peel the layers of cancer off.
I have not used that since I've met RSO.
I still had that jar,
that $30 jar stuff that
I don't use anymore
because I just take a pill of this
and I take it and it takes care of me.
And that's what I like about it.
- I've been making my own
seeds and my own plants
because I do believe the
diversity of this oil
is what actually is
the success of the oil.
You can't just make OG
Kush, or Sour Diesel oil
and expect to cure everything.
'Cause cancer's a very,
very smart organism.
And what that thing does
is figure out what we do
and how it can live off of it.
So if you can constantly
change what's killing it,
it will never figure out the combination
on how to kill you.
And I've figured that
that's what I believe
and that's what I push in
and you have to have an
allotment of diverse genetics.
And you have to understand growing
and quality proper
medicine without pesticides
and without other things that
are gonna cause problems,
that people do grow weed in their backyard
and some of these big companies
do it in their warehouses too.
They spray crazy stuff
on those plants too.
- There's a lot of different modalities
of administration and
just like we have with
regular pharmaceutical prescriptions,
you can use an oral pill,
you can use oral pill, spray in the mouth,
you can use something that's
been mixed in with food,
also known as an edible.
You can use the classic flower smoking
in a joint or you can vape in a cartridge.
You don't have to vape oil.
Right now that's unfortunately not
the route we're recommending
until we've figured out what's going on
in this day and age of vaping,
lung deaths and lung incidents.
- We have a few ways we can do this.
I mostly suggest that people
put it into a capsule.
They sell capsules at
your health food stores
and stuff like that and
they separate themselves.
And I tell people about the size
of a grain of rice into the capsule.
And take the capsule.
You can take a pill anywhere.
Nobody has a problem with
pills, going anywhere.
You take the capsule, it's
more of like a time release.
It takes up to 40 minutes
before it actually
releases in your stomach.
And now you have the duration of
four to eight hours of relief.
Or you can pull it off,
put it on your finger,
eat it right off your tongue.
And the onset of that is minutes.
Two to three minutes, you're
feeling warm in your body.
And it's a quick onset of relief,
but it's also, it doesn't
have a long duration,
you only get about two hours,
an hour and a half to two hours of relief.
So I just recommend people
that are really going,
that need a lot of help with chronic pain,
debilitating disorders, put it
in a capsule, and ingest it.
Take it.
If you're having a really bad problem,
take the capsule, put some on
your finger, take that too.
You get the immediate relief,
and when that starts to wear off,
it's barely kicking in
what you took in your gut.
And I do believe that your
stomach is your first brain.
You have to eat it, get
into your first brain,
it makes sense to the
one that we think with,
'cause this is the one that's,
it's intuition, and that knows
that you're feeling good,
it knows that the healing
has been put in you.
And it's way different than your mind,
your mind is thinking about,
"Oh man, my mom better
not know I'm stoned.
"My boss better not know I
took a little bit of medicine."
That's your mind, if it's your gut,
it's like thank you, we need this.
It releases what's stuck inside of you,
and it gives you enlightenment.
Yeah, so CBD, we learned about CBD
around 2008, I believe, 2008, 2009.
Good friend of mine, Ed
Borg, out of Delta-9 Labs
in Amsterdam was creating genetics
and came up with a
plant called Cannatonic.
And we didn't understand what
was really going on with it
at first, 'cause nobody's
really getting high.
Then we figured out it's CBD.
So we're like oh wow,
this thing, it was like,
it's not getting us high, but
people's pain is going away.
So this is interesting.
So that's when the cannabis industry,
if you wanna call it,
we'll call it a community at the time.
2008, we're still a community,
because when they figure these things out,
they accessed some of us to
work with these genetics.
So we're able to get some
of these genetics in,
and actually sure, experimented
with them with people.
- And so when you take a look at
each one of these chemicals,
we're starting to see the
body respond differently
and it's this balance
that we're looking at now,
to see when could something be lacking.
So when could it be that
our body is lacking in CBD?
There's a lot of theories
out right now floating around
about autism and CBD,
and seeing what part of this
spectrum can we match up.
For years, we've known that autism
is a diagnosis that we've had around.
And for years we haven't
been able to figure out
how to treat autism.
And part of it is, is because we don't
understand the chemical imbalances
or the physiological imbalances of autism.
So now that we're starting to look at it
from a different perspective
or perspective that we've
never approached in the past,
such as the endo cannabinoid system,
one of those things
that we're looking at is
could this be a deficiency of
the endo cannabinoid system?
And is that why we're
seeing a lot of changes
and positive changes and positive outcomes
for patients who start using cannabinoids
in terms of better outcomes,
better language control,
less anger, irritability,
and less anxiety?
Could that be a part in
this bigger diagnosis?
When we look at where is CBD
being kind of over hyped,
or really overly suggested
as beneficial, is sleep.
Unfortunately I don't
think that the data's
going to pan out and looking
through all the research,
what we are seeing is
that CBD can be disruptive
for sleep as opposed to helpful.
And one of the caveats to this is,
you know, every once in a
while people will be like,
"Well, but I use CBD for sleep
and it helps me really well."
And that's great, and
I'm so happy for that,
but the general public really, I think,
is being advertised falsely
that CBD is helpful for sleep.
There's a couple of reasons.
Number one, it tends to
be awakening or alerting.
I oftentimes say you can't
use something during the day
that is awakening and alerting
and then use it at night
and it's magically now sleep inducing.
You have to pick a side, can't be both.
So THC tends to be sedating
and we know the age old
couch lock kind of concept
and it plays out a little
bit more than that.
It does help for sleep,
whereas CBD, again,
tends to be more beneficial
during the daytime.
The times I do see CBD
beneficial for sleep
is when there's pain involved
in causing problems for sleep.
So let's say you've got a bad hip,
or you've broken a bone
and you're using CBD as a secondary
or an additive to your regimen,
and that is what's preventing
you from falling asleep,
then yes, that will be
helpful for your sleep.
But if you've got insomnia
for some other reason
and it's chronic, or if you're taking
ambien, lunesta, sonata,
one of these hypno-sedative
type medications,
it is very, very, very difficult
to get patients off of those medications
through the use of CBD.
I find it is incredibly
infrequent to have that happen.
- When CBD came, oh my
God, it was a godsend.
It's like anybody today
that just hears about CBD,
it's the most miraculous
thing on the planet.
And we really thought it was.
And so CBD has a non-psycotropical
effect of cannabis.
So you don't feel any effects,
which you still do feel effects,
'cause if you're in a lot of pain
and you take a lot of CBD,
that pain is gone, you're in a world.
You're in a different space.
You don't know what normal is,
because you're in constant pain.
And when that pain is turned off,
you're kind of lost for
the first few times.
You don't know what to do with yourself,
and we learned that we made
more people injure themselves
giving them pure CBD,
turning pain off completely.
With CBD, to me it's a double edged sword.
I haven't had anybody
beat cancer with just CBD.
I've had epileptic
patients' seizures slow down
to almost stop using a lot of CBD,
but the problem is, we
call it the CBD monster.
You have to keep taking
it, keep upping your dose.
And it's really hard when
you start at 50 milligrams
of CBD, which you can
get for, I don't know,
maybe 20 bucks at a gas station nowadays,
which is weird, but you get 20 bucks,
you get 50 milligrams of CBD.
But then you take that
and then it doesn't work
and now you're spending $40,
because you need 100 milligrams
and then in two weeks
you're up to 500 milligrams
and that's almost 500
bucks at some places.
CBD just turns pain off.
In my whole experience,
it just turns pain off.
Doesn't make you feel better,
doesn't get rid of the anxiety,
doesn't get rid of inflammation.
If you're gonna use CBDs,
I recommend CBD to be used
when people are getting out of surgeries
and you need to make somebody mobile.
They need to use the restroom,
take some CBD, go take your shower,
go change your clothes.
Sit down on the couch, now just relax.
Get healed, get some rest.
Oh, you need to go to the store?
You need to go pay some bills?
Take some CBD, go get your bills
done, be cognitively there.
Don't take THC or you're kind of loopy
and you're not all there.
CBD is more of understanding
how to utilize the CBD
and how it benefits.
When I meet people and they have diabetes,
rheumatoid arthritis or cancer,
and they tell me they need CBD.
I directly start directing them to THC.
Because once THC's used it's everywhere.
Low grade THC can be found anywhere,
high grade THC can be accessed
with the right people.
THC is needed, you always need THC.
And you need full plant THC,
especially if you're using
CBD for out of surgeries,
because THC gets rid of the inflammation,
gets rid of the irritation.
Not only that, the CBD
will turn off the pain,
but the THC will relax you
to where you don't go mow the lawn.
You don't go wash the
dishes and clean the house
til where you injure yourself again
and your family isn't
enjoying you anymore again.
And you're bipolar because
you're going through
these pain issues in and out.
And so the THC puts you on a level
where it just makes you relaxed.
The CBD lowers the pain.
And in that, you have a little bit more
respect for your healing.
People are just looking for
the quick fix, quick trick
and they're looking for that
"Oh, it doesn't show up on a drug test."
Well I recommend people
finding a new career.
'Cause money's not worth your life.
Everybody I watched die,
they didn't take a dollar with them
or take anything with them.
So working for the
benefit for your children
is not gonna benefit anything
if you're not here for your children.
And if you're gonna
spend all of your money
on something that's just
the ultimate snake oil
right now, enjoy it.
It does has a lot of beneficial factors,
and THC is the ultimate healer,
because if you turn down
the pressure in the body,
most of these anomalies
never actually take hold.
So if I can lower the
pressures of anxiety,
seizures don't trigger.
If I can lower the anxiety
pressure from the inflammation,
they don't get anxiety from the pain
from the inflammation.
THC does that, CBD does not do that.
Some people are completely afraid of THC.
- Fear, not knowing, they've been taught
that this is a dangerous medicine
and it's gonna make them a monster.
They're gonna do crazy things
that they've never wanted to do before.
Especially our elderly, like
they're just very ill-informed.
They've been taught that
this is a dangerous drug
and that it's gonna make
them do crazy things
and it's just explaining to them
that it might make you feel funny,
a lot of opiates that these
elderly people are around
make me feel funny when I've tried them,
so I can tell them from
experience of taking an opiate,
it won't be any funnier than that feel.
I guarantee you that.
(laughs) You know what I mean?
It's not scary.
It's kind of like a nice feeling.
I think it's for me,
it's an uplifting feeling
and I think that's where the fear lies,
that's they're just not used
to feeling that freeness.
And it's just letting them,
like how do, but do you feel better?
And they usually like "Yes."
- It's THC, THC will mellow that out.
You get home, you've
had a hard day of work,
there's no problem with people
drinking a glass of wine,
people smoking a cigarette,
now you can take a bong rip.
You can smoke a pre-roll,
you can hit a vape pen.
Well, why you don't you get good rest
and take some full plant medicine
and get your body to actually relax?
We have more receptors in our stomach
and our abdominal system than
anywhere in our whole body
for cannabinoid receptors.
So the first thing we do
is, we detox our body.
We completely flush our intestines out,
get rid of all the stuff
that's been preserved in foods
that are stuck in our intestines
and are just getting us
sick, keeping us sick.
All the preservative food
that's stuck inside of our gut,
it washes it out, clears the mind,
gets you good rest, you
wake up feeling refreshed.
And so it's really hard
to put into context
when people think it's just
snake oil or it's just weed.
Talk to somebody that
really understands it,
get to a regimen that makes sense.
Understand why you're using these things,
just don't use CBD
because somebody told you
that it's gonna keep your seizures away.
Find out how and where
do you get seizures from.
- My daughter, she was
expecting her second child,
and she was having a really,
really rough pregnancy.
I mean she was just in horrible pain.
Of course the doctors
wouldn't listen to her.
I worked with doctors and granted,
they have a lot going on in their head
and I have a lot of respect for
a lot of the ones I worked with.
But some of them, they
have so much going on
in their head, they never
hear what's coming into them.
They make a decision before
they even talk to you.
She could not get anybody
to take her seriously.
And she finally got to where she
felt like she couldn't breathe.
I said go to a different emergency room,
and when they took an X-ray,
she had a tumor in her
liver that was so large,
it was up into her right chest.
So she went into the hospital,
I wanted her to take the oil.
But of course, she was afraid
to because she was pregnant.
Well, then they took the baby,
and I continued to try to
get her to take the oil.
And the thing is, my daughter
taught high school French.
She was a high school teacher.
She said, "Mom, I'll lose my license
"if I test positive for THC."
And I'm just frantic with
wanting her to do it,
but I also would never force
anybody to do anything.
I mean, she went through
a lot of education
to get to her teaching credentials.
She didn't wanna take it,
and didn't wanna take it.
And then they told her she
was dying, and then she died.
I don't know that it would've helped her.
I believe it would've given her more time
and maybe come home,
help her quality of life.
Get her home to at least
spend some time with her baby.
I mean it's a tool that we are denied.
She was denied it, because of this stigma.
You know, she would lose her job.
And so she couldn't even use it
for the comfort it would
give her towards the end.
- So when I talk to my colleagues,
my other fellow physicians about cannabis,
I get a lot of this.
"I don't know."
I get a lot of, "Well,
I can't talk about that
"because it's illegal."
I get a lot of, "I can't
attend that conference
"because they're talking about cannabis
"and that would create a
problem for my practice."
All of these fears that
have been instilled in us,
as a medical community,
I am working diligently on proving wrong.
Healthcare providers in general right now
are not doing a very good
job of discussing it.
And part of the reason for that is that
we've been told this myth
that we're not allowed to.
When are we going to be encouraged
to talk about this with our patients?
When is this gonna be required?
When is this gonna be
taught in medical school?
In residency, in
internship, in fellowship?
When is it gonna be
part of the discussion?
When is it going to come to the table?
When will we start talking
about the medical indications?
And that's been on the
shoulders of the patients
for a long time.
- Well, since I worked
in respiratory therapy,
and I worked at the veteran's hospital,
the big thing we talked about was that
people with air hunger,
now, a person that's dying from emphysema,
they feel like they're suffocating.
And so it starts with they
feel like you've got something
in front of their face until they feel
like they have a pillow over
their head all the time.
And that's their life.
"I can't breathe, I can't breathe."
They have a hard time eating
because they can't breathe.
Well, the veteran's hospital
actually started giving these patients
synthetic marijuana oil to
help with their air hunger.
Now, let me tell you,
I've even put morphine
in a little inhaler thing for patients,
because their air hunger was so bad,
and we were trying to find some
way to ease their breathing.
And the thing with
morphine is, it works great
to make you feel not short of breath,
but it also makes you
not feel like breathing.
And so, you've already got somebody
that can't get enough air in and out,
and now they don't feel like breathing.
So it was really rough to
try and give them that.
The medical marijuana oil
that we gave our patients
was like a lifesaver for many of them.
Because it got rid of their air hunger,
it improved their appetite.
I mean I can't tell you how many patients
I talked to that this,
it made such a difference
for their quality of life.
- I still talk to them.
I talk to them all the time.
I'm teaching them now.
Because I'm still here and
I'm still getting better.
My numbers are changing,
I don't come in asking
for pain medication.
I'm asking them for what
the blood work says,
because I know what I'm doing for myself.
All they wanna do is hear what
I have to say and document
and then they can lead
me in the direction of
whatever pharmaceutical
company that accommodates
that type of pain.
But if I don't come in with a pain,
then "Where you at psychologically?"
- So having to turn people away
is the worst part of my day.
I do not write for
recreational use of cannabis.
I cannot risk my medical license
or risk you being put in a position where
you get pulled over by the police,
and the police look at
your medical recommendation
and blow it off because they think it's
nonsensical or BS.
We need to have these
protections under the law
and in order to do that,
we have to be really strict with who
we allow to give these prescriptions to
or recommendations to.
Because we don't want it ever to blow up
in any of our faces.
If I lost my license tomorrow,
not only would it be a
problem for me and my family,
but it would also be a problem for
all of the thousands of
patients that we treat.
It would be a problem
for all of the patients
who no longer will have
access to a physician
who can talk to them about
dosage and medication use.
And as we talked about earlier,
here in Los Angeles, we
have about 3 physicians
who are willing to go the distance
and do these types of discussions,
recommendations for
patients and their families.
- Like Rick Simpson told
me years ago in Amsterdam,
this is what works.
And he's not lying.
And I've witnessed it.
And the reason why I call it NHO,
my company, Native Healing Oils,
is because I'm not Rick Simpson,
I don't call it Rick Simpson Oil,
Rick Simpson doesn't even
call it Rick Simpson Oil.
He's not that kind of boast-y person,
it was called Phoenix Tears.
Rise from the ashes, that's
what this medicine was about.
Health, help, life, encouragements
and bringing youth up
proper, self respect,
community respect, plant respect.
There's a lot of tools here to help us,
but then everybody's been ridiculing them
and afraid of them
because of crazy stories
and all these other things.
But we have to come back to
the brass tax of reality.
You take this, you feel
like a human being again.
And that's one thing that is missing
on this entire planet right now,
unless you can get lost in nature.
So as long as you're working everyday
for that big house and that nice car,
for some reason society has told you
that these things make you
feel happy and then you don't,
and then you get some messed
up disorder or disease
and you can no longer provide for that,
you lose that big house,
you lose that big car,
you live on your kids'
bedroom in a hospital chair,
in a bed with IVs and tubes
running down your mouth
and your face and your nose
and you can't even tell
your child you love them,
you can't even laugh with your friend
because you can't breath,
you don't feel good.
Those are all the things
that are happening
all day everyday
and I believe that this medicine
works for every single person.
It's the personalities
that we're dealing with,
the upbringing that you've had,
if you have the strength
to push through pain
and if you know that there's
a better end of the effort,
there's always a good story
at the end of the effort.
This medicine will help.
This tool is very effective.
But if you continue to eat terrible
and keep going to McDonald's
and you keep doing terrible things,
this medicine's gonna
do absolutely nothing.
You have to understand
when I meet my patients
and they tell me they have cancer,
they have these disorders
and they need my help,
the first thing I tell them is
that they have to be willing
to get rid of the whole life
that they lived before they
met me and shook my hand.
It is time to change and
things are gonna be different.
You had a good run, 40, 50, 60, 70 years
of eating whatever you wanted,
doing whatever you wanted.
Well, maybe it all caught up to you.
Now you have this anomaly in your body,
it's time to change it.
That's what makes us human beings,
we have the option of change.
And we could change
ourselves to believe in good
and look at all the
people that you witness
that are using this medicine
and nobody's holding a gun to their head.
This is all their free will.
They want to feel better,
they're tired of the
pharmaceutical system,
they're tired of the medical
system and the industry.
I just watched on the news the other day
that Kaiser is pretty ecstatic about
the best profits they've
ever had in their business.
And what's really sickens me to my stomach
because I know a lot of people that are
in Kaiser systems right now,
that can't even let them know
that they're using cannabis.
And they're profiting off the drugs
that they give these people
that they don't even take.
And so there's all this
misinformation out there,
because patients are afraid
to tell their doctors
why they're feeling better.
How come they're feeling better
and they're getting all
these fake medications
are getting the glory for cannabis,
'cause the thousands of
people that I've helped
have never told their doctor that this
is why they're better.
And they have all the prescriptions
that the doctors gave them
sitting in a bag underneath their bed.
You can't change my mind, 20 plus years,
over 5000 people I've seen go.
And some of them have
gone to other worlds,
some of them are in better places,
some of them are working on it right now,
trying to better than they were yesterday.
They do get a good night's rest,
they don't have
inflammation or irritation.
They're not anxietal and freaked out.
They are not their ailment.
You know, everybody's talking about
F cancer, F this, F that, no, no.
F what causes those things.
They're gonna be here no matter what.
So why don't you learn
how not to fall into that
conundrum of its endurement.
And you just try to find a better way
for other answers, question things.
And don't be content until
it resonates with your heart
that it's right.
And that's hard to tell people
when they're used to saying,
"Well, do I take this
every two to four hours?
"Am I taking 100 milligrams
"or do I need to take 25 milligrams?"
It's too much information.
In Washington, when legalization went,
patients were coming into our dispensary
with prescriptions like that.
3000 milligrams of CBD,
and 200 milligrams of THC.
I said, "Where are you
gonna find this stuff?
"When has this made sense
"to this doctor to offer it to you?"
And that's when things
started making sense.
Well, if I can get them a
first full night's of rest,
I've gotten rid of so many
more problems just with sleep.
And this has given
people the deepest sleep
that they've had since they were children.
And I've heard that
thousands of times over,
and that's the only reason
why I use this today now.
After they wanted to replace my spine,
telling me I have all kinds of issues,
and they had a lot of,
I was hooked on opiates for a long time.
This got me off of opiates and for years,
I used to go to methadone clinics
and help people get off
of methadone and heroin
using this medicine.
I actually stopped my
friend's 19 year old son
from slamming heroin in his arm,
using RSO, NHO, Phoenix Tears,
whatever you wanna call it.
I didn't do it with vape pens,
I didn't do it with brownies,
I didn't do it with joints,
I did it with heavy doses of this.
It took us two weeks for his son
to get out of detox and not
go into a hospital system.
But we were able to stop numerous people
from slamming heroin
and that's one of my most favorite things
about this medicine.
Everybody loves the cancer stories,
people love the AIDS stories,
but I get to stop people
from taking opiates.
That's one of my meanest, meanest efforts
on this planet right now.
Because that's the worst
drug ever given to society.
And you know what I'll do until I die?
Is teach everybody how
to make this medicine
so they don't ever have
to touch an opiate.
Oh, I think the main
thing that is necessary,
which I believe my good friend, Pete,
me and him have been
on the same wavelengths
for quite a few years,
is we need healing centers.
We need understanding healing centers.
We need places that,
like I explained earlier,
you gotta find what you're good at,
and you gotta just thrive in that.
You know, you can't just be good at this
and then say you're good at that
and say you're good at this and
then everything falls apart.
No, you've gotta be
good at what you're at,
and you've got to find
somebody that fills the gaps
of all those things.
And that's what a healing center will do.
A healing center will bring nutritionists,
it will bring physicians,
it will bring nurses,
it will bring scientists and chemists.
And it will bring people that
have been in this movement
since the beginning of the signatures
that have witnessed it on so many levels
to just hear us out.
You don't need to slap us
in the face with science
and the understanding of what it is,
because we couldn't even
talk about what we've done
and what we've accomplished since 1995.
And we've accomplished so much
that it's legal almost
around the world now,
or getting there.
California's movement of medical marijuana
is the truth movement of cannabis.
And I do believe that we need this
in its own personal health systems.
Not in Kaiser, not in Blue Cross,
this needs to be an independent building
funded by independent people
for independent human beings to walk in
and get a independent understanding
of why they need to use it,
how it benefits them,
how they can utilize it.
And that's what I think is the most
beneficial thing out of all this.
- Open your mind to things that
maybe you didn't think
positive about before.
Be open to people using what helps them.
Whatever that may be.
Whether it's medical marijuana,
from being somebody
that was so against it,
and I've seen so many people helped by it.
And I haven't seen anybody overdose on it.
I haven't seen anybody be addicted to it.
When you have something that's safe
and effective, for many people,
I mean obviously not everybody.
Everybody's different.
But be a little bit more open to
what's in front of our face
instead of rejecting it.
(air blowing)
- I can take that product
and it'll give me a calm
which would give me an
opportunity to wrap my mind around
eat that bowl of cereal.
Have a piece of fruit.
And if you can get that in your gut,
and start your body to
functioning and its natural,
that's what you trying to do
because that energy's
gonna bring more life
and you're gonna be able
to inspire somebody else
to get some good habits.
If we stop demonizing,
you make people reach at it even harder
when you wanna keep it in
that state of being illegal.
Whether or not you believe you in God,
or you believe in evolution,
either way, inside of these
little meat puppets we're
riding along inside of,
there's a system, endo cannabinoid system.
And it only talks to cannabis.
And if you believe that we evolved,
then for something like that to evolve to
probably ten to thousands or
millions of years, you know?
And it was very special,
a symbiotic relationship
that we've now been thrust into
a time and an age where
we're being told that it's
dirty and it's terrible.
It was demonized.
We ignorantly, in America, think that
we got it all figured out,
we got this great system.
And the most important
thing about any society
is caring for people and their health.
And in this society, we
send people to a place
where they give you hopelessness,
where they fill you full of drugs
that make you sicker and make
you then rely upon more drugs.
And we exist in this system,
that we think is so great.
And we're torn away
from our natural habitat
that has every last thing
that we ever needed and again,
if we evolved, that we evolved with.
And now we've been crammed
into this little box
of synthesized goop
that's now being pumped
into our natural bodies
and making them sick.
- So right now, what
we're seeing a lot of is
this dichotomy between
patients wanting to be honest
with their doctors, which
is what I always suggest
and wholeheartedly recommend.
And at the same time,
physicians turning their backs on patients
who do use cannabis products, again,
because of lack of education.
It's not because doctors
want to turn patients away,
they want to engage with you,
they enjoy engaging with patients,
they thrive from helping people,
that's why they go into this business.
Otherwise it would be a big problem.
That being said, if we
don't educate our patients
or our physicians, we will find a place
where our patients are
gonna start being dishonest
and it's gonna cause
problems medically for them.
We're talking about perioperative
changes in medication usage
and how much anesthesia patients need.
But I can't tell you that if
you're not honest with me.
If you don't tell me that
you're using cannabis products
three, four times a day,
I can't tell your surgeon
and your anesthesiologist
that they need to up
their dose of anesthesia,
because you may still be
awake when you go under.
So let's have these open conversations
and let's make sure that
our physicians are educated.
- Things are so different
than I thought they were.
You know, you do this whole
everything is black and white,
but as you get older,
hopefully you begin to realize
that there is no black
and white, it's all gray.
- And so I think that
we need to have people
with the understanding,
the spiritual understanding
of what medical cannabis'
movement for 20 years was about.
It was about getting sick,
reaching out, finding help,
and then building friendships
and relationships.
- I'm 67 years old, I didn't
even know how sick I was.
I can't tell you how much
energy I have right now.
Take this man that you see,
this old man sitting here,
and I could do what a 20 year
old could do today right now.
That's how I feel.
- There's already gonna
be propaganda's out there
saying it's snake oil and
they don't understand it,
and it's hoopla, it's herbal healing
and it's also, you
know, weird compartments
they try to put us in to segregate us.
No, we're normal people,
we work regular jobs, we have families,
we wanna go to dinner parties,
and we wanna experience a
good time while we're here,
and if you fall into a little situation,
you should have a place in every community
that you can walk into
and have the understanding
from people that have been
doing this for a lot of years.
Most of the people that
go to a doctor understand
that they just need some treatment.
And that's what they don't do right now.
There's no care in healthcare.
There's no health in healthcare either.
And it's a business.
And so that's what's needed, is a care,
a facility to care for these people,
that's funded, that we can sit there
and just wait for somebody
to walk in that door,
whether they have a two month old baby
or a hundred year old grandmother,
it's the same community.
It's just people wanting to feel better
and that's what's really needed.
And I have this scenario thing of
I work in a lot of different worlds
when it comes to medicines
and one of the experiences
that I went through was,
I had this epiphany thing is that
I try to live this life right now
of what the healthcare system was
when they kind of found it.
You know, in the 1600s,
if I would've got sick,
I'd send my son on a horse into town,
which would be a two or three day trek,
he'd get there and there'd
be a receptionist there
with a pad of paper and a
note, friend will leave a note.
And that note would be
directions to my house
and who I am.
And the doctor, he get back,
he'd get this note,
he'd jump on his horse,
he'd ride to my house.
Gets to my property.
So when he gets there, and
he walks up to my property
and all of my vegetable garden is dead,
all my livestock is gone.
He opens up the door to my house,
and I'm sitting on my couch,
and my foot is swollen, I have gout.
I have all these problems with me
that I brought on myself.
And you know what the doctor says
as soon as he walks through my door?
He says, "Hey, lazy.
"Get back in your garden
and water your vegetables.
"Quit killing your livestock and have them
"fertilize your vegetables.
"Stop being so lazy and gluttonous.
"Have a purpose for this planet."
And the doctor would say,
"You're wasting my time.
"You selectively did this to yourself.
"There's somebody over
here with an infection
"I need to go help and
you're just wasting my time."
Instead today, we make an appointment,
which is like 30 days out.
You sit in a sterile, pristine office
with 20 other people.
The time that you were supposed
to be there comes and goes,
but god forbid you're 10 minutes late,
they won't see you for another month.
You walk into his office,
he never looks at you in the face,
he's looking at, well, now
they're look at a tablet.
They used to look at a clipboard.
They never look at you,
they never ask you how you're doing.
They never know what's
really going on in your life.
They prescribe you a
couple of prescriptions,
they kick you out the door and
then it's just a cattle run.
The next one's right behind.
- Marijuana's been, since
the beginning of time,
they've been using it as a medication.
You know it, I know it.
You know, this man here,
he's managed to come up with
a product that's unreal.
- I'd walk into homes, I'd talk to people,
I open their fridge, I
see what's bothering them,
I drive around with some of them
to doctors appointments.
I've administered suppositories to people.
I do what it takes to let them understand
the compassion and healing of cannabis.
And when Dennis Peron
looked at me in my face,
and told me, "This is about dying people.
"It's not about your life."
I love you, Dennis.
- It will kill cancer.
It will kill cancer, if
taken in the right way,
it will kill cancer.
It's not a, does it kill cancer?
It does.
- (laughing) Any other questions?
(lighthearted acoustic music)