WEBVTT FILE

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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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Literally, for centuries in this country, in every country,

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people have been going to war,

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they've had skirmishes,

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they've been in battle, and when they come home from these battles,

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everybody says the same thing:

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"My loved one came home a different person."

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Every war fighter that went to war kicked a door, did some stuff,

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came home and said, "You know what? I don't feel like the same

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person."

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Well, they're not, we're not, I'm not...

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I still have PTSD from being an infantryman in the Marines.

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You see stuff, and you lose brothers, you lose friends.

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He was under so many drugs that they gave him,

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that he was like a zombie, and he wanted

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to just let the pain go.

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My history with the zombie dope started at Walter Reed Army Medical Center,

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when a field grade officer officer gave me my first prescription of Seroquel,

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couldn't do it on the dope, it's all bad, it was just all

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bad, but I got off of it.

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Nobody was in tune, and my son died,

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he took his own life because of that drug. This study is built

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around the idea that we were looking for veterans with combat related trauma

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because we felt that there was such a dire need with the epidemic

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of veteran suicide in this country. Marijuana 100% saved my life,

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it created lives, as in my daughters,

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and then all my buddies that I'm helping that... That are along the

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process.

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Josh is US Marine Corps combat veteran of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment,

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who was one of the very last casualties of the Battle of Fallujah in

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2004, the largest urban combat operation since the Vietnam War. Josh was

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part of a six week battle that involved vicious street by street and house

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by house fighting against an entrenched enemy that left nearly 100 American

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soldiers and Marines dead,

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and 560 wounded. Charlie, oh my gosh, holy moly, hey babe. Josh was

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awarded his first Purple Heart in November 2002, when he was knocked unconscious

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and suffered other wounds from a rocket propelled grenade blast. That's

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what I tell everybody, "Google that shit: '3rd Battalion 1st Marines in

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Fallujah.'" Less than a month later, he took a more serious wound when

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he got in a gunfight with an Iraqi insurgent while clearing a house

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in Fallujah. Pillows, decorative pillows. Wow! A new blanket... Looks like

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you went to grandma's house actually. He needed six blood transfusions to

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keep him alive, and eventually underwent 22 operations.

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Josh is an ambassador from the veteran community and an outspoken advocate

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for medical cannabis research. Without medical marijuana,

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I couldn't get up here and speak, I couldn't even get on a

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plane, I couldn't take my kids to school, I couldn't go to the

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grocery store, I couldn't do any of that. And with medical marijuana

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I can do all that and then some. And I stay in the

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community. Yeah, I have lots of limitations. You may look at me,

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I'm totally fine but if I had some cut offs on...

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It's pretty serious stuff, but to have the VA tell you you're doing

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something bad

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because it's illegal... It was voted on by guys that are probably dead

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now, long gone,

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we need to come, stop the madness, we need to get this stuff

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on the books, we wanna save guys.

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This is the real action, the pot partying, the trippers, the grasshoppers,

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the hip ones, all gathered in secrecy and flying high as a kite. Outside

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the boundaries of their phony world of kicks is the ever present possibility

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of discovery. This must be avoided at all costs, for discovery brings with

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it the penalties of society: Shame; arrest; prison. So destroy the evidence,

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leave not a trace, burn it in paper trash, that way,

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they can deny possessing the illegal marijuana. Let's go back to 2003,

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2003 is when I joined the Marine Corps at age 26 years old.

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I go to boot camp, I get on those yellow footprints;

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man, my life changed forever and...

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I was in a battle of Fallujah, Operation Phantom Fury. Fallujah was like

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the hot spot where all the bad guys... Even Saddam Hussein was like...

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Just left Fallujah alone.

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Two weeks before I got shot, my second Purple Heart, I received my

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first Purple Heart, an RPG blew up,

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I was up in the gun, and we had been... We had inched by a

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couple of weeks in, and was just serious fighting,

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just serious fighting, like the tanks and door to door. Everything was just

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going on. No, I wasn't happy to go up in the gun,

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but it's like... Yeah, I was replacing it 'cause Lance Corporal Burns got

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shot in his head and he was one of the best gunners

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in the platoon, and he got shot the first day.

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So that's when we were like, "Shit's gotten real." Hey, what bullshit gear

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we got out there? What was it? His Kevlar? Yeah, I mean do

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you... You have his Kevlar? Yeah. Right here. Hit right here. Okay. It's

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in the back of the head.

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And he pulled that outta there? Yeah, he's freaking... You see right there,

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so

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I don't know, maybe he hit his head and bounced off or something,

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I don't know. It's weird. Ricocheted all around.

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And then I see these... I see this RPG, the guy with RPG, and

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basically, we're sitting at an intersection. There's a house here, and I

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can look all over and I can see down the street.

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And I'm like, "Oh there's a dude with the RPG." And I'm like,

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"RPG!" And then I come back and then he didn't shoot.

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And then I looked back for a third time and then it's like, "Shoot!" And

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it just goes dink, dink, dink. I'm like, "Oh, it's a dud", boom!

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And then I just woke up on the gun, I don't know how

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the hell I didn't freaking get my face blown off or anything,

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but it was just like burns and scrapes, but I was,

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man, just so lucky, but not... And then

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this goes into the day I got shot two weeks later,

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and we were starting to come down. We knew we were going home

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soon, too, 'cause on paper, we were supposed to go home in two

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weeks.

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December 11th, we'll go back to December 11th, 2004.

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I was in a CAT team, combined anti armor team, and with basically

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four vehicles. The lead vehicle's the 50 cal, and then I was the

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rear vehicle, rear security with the Mark 19 grenade launcher.

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So, at this point we'd already shot... I'd probably already shot about 3,000

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Mark rounds. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. This Frank Dizzle, my

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nizzle. We're getting so close to going home, all we could think about

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was America and going home. And then Platoon Sergeant comes in and is like,

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"Hey, we gotta go back out, be on the trucks at 06:00." Man, and

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so we go to the mayor's house in Fallujah. That was basically our

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AO. We were just gonna go. And some guys are on top of

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the house doing the OP. And then we see a guy run across

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the street and kneel down. And it was like, "Guys, guys!"

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And then my buddy, Dickinson, first thing he does is he jumps out

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and he ran down. And him and there was... I forget the other

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two Marines, and they all went down and then it was just total

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chaos, I just hear pop, pop, pop, pop. I'm still in the gun.

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I'm trying to get on the radio to call the QRF, the other

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team, the other vehicles 'cause there's... We only had two on one side

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and the other two were on the other side. So I jump out

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of the gun and I run down probably, I don't know,

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50 meters. Then the rest of the QRF team came in,

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and that's when we went inside to go get Dickie 'cause he was

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down in there. Where'd he go? Where'd

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he go? Get in that motherfucker. Kill his ass. Yeah. And that's when we

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go inside the...

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In all the freaking... Just the chaos of pop... I saw the guy, pop pop pop!

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And then there's three of us online, and

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basically we shot at the same time.

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And then all of a sudden, my arm was just like...

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It just fell... My brain, it just felt like I got hit really,

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really hard. They had to drive me four or five miles to the

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Surgical Center. Then all I remember, I wanted to go to sleep 'cause

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I'm in the back of the Humvee. And then, Eubanks, private... Or PFC

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Eubanks is just sitting there like, "Frank, you gotta stay awake." I'm like,

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"Give me a cigarette." So I light the cigarette and he's like, "Okay."

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And then I'm like... And then I woke up on the table.

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Take a nice deep breath. Then exhale and let those ribs fall. That's perfect.

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Do you wanna be like, "Did he really get shot?" I mean, if

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I got shot, I'd be screaming if I was on the table and he

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was doing that to me.

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Well.

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I did scream and cry alone many years, people. Terrence makes it easy,

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look easy. Yeah, remember in the beginning, man? It was tough. Yeah.. Weekend

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at Bernie's? Second one is Sling Blade.. Alright, let's pull out the list

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of everything they got. Problems, they call them: Head injury, shotgun wound,

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right shoulder, injury from terrorists, caused fire burns, vertigo, migraine

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headache, depression. I thought I had major depression and depression. Shit.

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Yeah. You know I just... But this whole box was so adhered to by myofascial

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adhesions that when I first met him, I couldn't get it to shift.

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It was actually moving muscle tissue and everything because it builds up

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scar tissue from the adhesions. But think about it, the muscle insertions

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and all the nerve points that come through here, this thing is pressing

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on it every time he sits on a chair,

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so. If you think about it, I have this other surgery, that's why

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I did. But now I'm like, "I wanna do it, but then I'm

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like, "Man I really don't wanna go... Through another surgery.

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Like an Iraqi fire. That's the actual wires right there. Wow. It's a Medtronic

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nerve stimulator. And I

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got like... Basically, that's another thing too because

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they got in good with the hospital. Basically these guys came to the

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hospital and put them in all of us. I mean, but even with

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the repair and everything to the structure, there's muscle tissue that's

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gone, there's bony process that's gone. I got all of my X rays,

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too, so you can actually see, 'cause visual... People are really visual.

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Yeah, you can see just the structure of the it's completely different.

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You see it, and all the shrap metal from the bullet

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that are still inside me, freaking, there's just... I don't know, it's just

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crazy. Yeah. If you wanna get a good story about that,

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ask the wife about when I got shot, freaking, like all the shit

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that they put me through, and her.

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Here's the pictures of us on our... We had the big wedding.

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Got married for the second time.

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Very early on in meeting Josh, I was instantly attracted to

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his easy going, just really humble nature. Never met anybody that didn't

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like him and he pretty much liked everybody too. And I thought that

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was

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a pretty good quality. He's very much himself

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and confident. And

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who doesn't like a confident man? Honestly.

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And I don't think I was as confident. And so

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I think he lifted me up, and

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I think we were a good balance. This dude just beat me by

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a... He was ranked 2,378th and I would've won if...

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It's just a game.

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He seems to make the best out of

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most situations. And

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after we got married, we really learned the true testament in that.

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But I just could see us just being a really strong team.

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We were a really strong team from very early on, and the commitment

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was strong, and the friendship was amazing. Amazing. So

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I'm truly convinced that I married my best friend. Josh was attached to

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3 1

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shortly after we got engaged. We didn't know how long before he got

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cut orders and how long before it was gonna be before he left

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for Iraq. So we eloped, it was very quiet, we kept it that

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way. He deployed. I spent the whole time he was deployed,

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going to school and planning our wedding for when he came home.

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That was something to keep me busy, something to focus on.

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I always told Josh before he left, I said, "If officers show up

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at the door, I won't open the door, 'cause I already know what

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they're there for. I don't need them to say anything, I already know

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what it's about." He'd been gone seven and a half months,

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and the day that I

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dropped 175 wedding invitations in the mail was the day I also found

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out that he'd been severely injured in Iraq,

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which was also two weeks before our one year wedding anniversary,

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and two weeks before the day he was supposed to be coming home.

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I don't think there is really any way you can prepare yourself for

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what's coming next, because it's all just one question mark after another

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after another. Looking back now, it was a whirlwind, 22 surgeries in 18

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months. We didn't really start to see a lot of Josh's PTSD issues

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until he started to recover from all of the reconstruction of his shoulder.

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That took precedence over everything.

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We didn't start to even diagnose or look into

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what this has done to him mentally. The first

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three years he was out of the military, he was a shell of

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a human being. Lights were on but there really was not anybody home.

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He was very isolated. This really joyful person and leader, and always active

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and super friendly person, did not exist. He kept to himself,

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he didn't go anywhere, he didn't do anything,

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he took pills.

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That's what he did. He took pills and he went to the VA,

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so that they would keep giving him pills. Alright, active medications.

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This was back in '07. I can't even pronounce half these things:

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Controlled Substance Release 180mg Verapamil, Clonidine, Seroquel. It's

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ridiculous. And

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this is just what they start you with.

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And

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reading in here,

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there's so much,

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these medical records, and there's so many of us that had this stuff.

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And look at this, refills left. Let's just go to that,

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we don't have to worry about whatever the hell the freakin' the pill

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is, because we already know there's a bunch of pills and the opium

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problem, the opiates and all this. Refills left, 1 of 1, 3 of

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3, 1 of 1, 3 of 3. This is one, two,

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three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13,

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and this is back in '06, so this is way before the damn

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2007, 2008, 2009, I could get in to all those. Are you kidding me? Three

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of 3. All that money wasted,

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it makes no sense. And then it all goes back to freaking,

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all this stuff, it made me feel like a complete piece of shit.

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I didn't wanna live, you know what I mean? I thought that it

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wasn't because of this, I'm like, "Well they're trying to help me."

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They wanna avoid the troops. They're like, "Well, what can help them?"

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Then they wanna listen, and then you tell them, and then you're like,

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"Hey actually, weed will help us." And then they're like, "Well,

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oh no. Hey, you guys are talking that crazy talk."

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But, weed just helps me stay in the here and now.

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And this is just... How many times have we've been talking about this,

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honestly? We've been talking about weed this long?

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Come on, man, all those pills Frey dog with you, everybody,

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and they saw me on all the pills, I was crazy.

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They see me on the weed, they're like, "I love you,

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Frey. Frey, how do you do it?" Weed and freaking determination,

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and

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happy that I have two legs.

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Yeah, I got shot and it hurts and all this, but my buddy

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Joe, and my buddy Bo Jones, and all these other dudes missing legs,

264
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to have them not to complain either, that's where it's like,

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"Damn, I'm definitely not complaining about my shit." And

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it all goes back to green. They're all on the green.

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Marijuana.

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My name is Janel Ralph, I am the Executive Director of Compassionate South

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Carolina, also known as csc.health. We are the patients' advocacy group,

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fighting for patients' rights in South Carolina, to be able to use medical

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cannabis through a tightly regulated comprehensive program.

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Today, we are here at the Richland County Library in Columbia,

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South Carolina, filming several PSAs. We have medical professionals, we

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have law enforcer officers, and we have several patients from around the

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states, all coming in to talk about their stories and why they support

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medical marijuana. Action. Currently, what's legal here is industrial hemp,

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so we have a hemp program here that was passed last year.

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We initially had in 2014, one of the CBD only bills.

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CBD is not a fix all.

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For a lot of people, they need higher levels of THC,

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or they need THC to help improve their quality of life.

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Whereas CBD is... It's great and it benefits a lot of areas,

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but having access to the whole entire plant is extremely important for a

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lot of different complicated conditions. So the scientific definition of

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the plant is THC dominant, trace amounts of CBD is marijuana,

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CBD dominant, trace amounts of THC is hemp. And so that's how it's

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defined. Now that we have Federal programs under the Federal Farm Bill to

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be able to cultivate and grow hemp under pilot research programs,

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we've seen a lot of these CBD products enter the market in the

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last three years, 'cause they are legal products grown federally compliant,

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where medical marijuana is still a Schedule 1 drug,

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so now we have to fight on a state by state level to

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allow access to the other part of the plant.

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Certainly in terms of overdose, people treating pain through cannabis have

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zero chance of an overdose. That's a good thing to touch on, right there.

296
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Yeah, I have no personal story. But you're a good storyteller. I was

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the chief federal law enforcement officer for six and a half years..

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Well, actually you do though, Bill, if you think about it,

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00:20:33.220 --> 00:20:36.250
because while you were the United States attorney, you changed policy on...

300
00:20:36.310 --> 00:20:40.240
Oh yeah, yeah. Doctors are not allowed to prescribe it, doctors are only

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allowed to recommend it, otherwise they risk their license to prescribe

302
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other drugs, because as a Schedule 1 drug,

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it is classified as no medicinal benefits. It's classified higher than crystal

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meth,

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as in cocaine, and a lot of these very damaging drugs,

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obviously, opiates, which we know. So it's got a higher classification on

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00:21:01.180 --> 00:21:06.020
that list. So if the federal government actually de scheduled cannabis and

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there was a system to dispense it, through the federal government.

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Then, of course... I guess patients could get access if doctors wanted to

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write prescriptions for it. We're years away from that ever happening.

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That type of a system is not workable for many, many years to

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come, because if they de scheduled, then it has to go through the

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FDA process, there's gonna be IND drug trials that'll have to be set

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00:21:29.440 --> 00:21:32.000
up, and some of these drug trials take five, 10 years.

315
00:21:32.460 --> 00:21:35.840
This is a... The whole notion of the FDA

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allowing access to medical marijuana is not a comprehensive notion. We could

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be waiting 20 years, and thousands and thousands of more people will pass

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away and die, with something we know has never killed anybody.

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I've never been against marijuana, I've never been against people that use

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marijuana, I've never really had a strong opinion on it one way or

321
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the other. My opinion started to shift a lot when

322
00:22:04.120 --> 00:22:07.660
I was witnessing what pharmaceuticals were doing to my husband,

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and then on the occasions when he would smoke marijuana and use marijuana,

324
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I would start to catch glimpses of the person I fell in love with. Send

325
00:22:19.470 --> 00:22:20.660
that one to Madison. The

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00:22:21.680 --> 00:22:29.080
more he partook in marijuana, the less pills he took, and he started

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eliminating one pill at a time. And as the caregiver, you would think

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that since I'd been so involved with all of his care,

329
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that I would know, to a tee, what pills he was taking.

330
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At this point, I didn't.

331
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Let's see how good at this, still.

332
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I don't think for probably four years, he took what he was actually

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prescribed from the VA, he took what worked for him. Today,

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Josh is pill free, he 100% uses marijuana for all of his

335
00:23:05.340 --> 00:23:07.340
injuries, whether they're mental or physical.

336
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I went in there and then came out of the back.

337
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He's much more calm and he's able to go out into public,

338
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and actually be relaxed in a public setting,

339
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which was absolutely impossible before. We avoided a lot of public places,

340
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crowds, etcetera, etcetera, because it was just absolutely too much for

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00:23:30.437 --> 00:23:34.160
him. This is a good idea, this is a good idea. Alright I

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00:23:34.170 --> 00:23:37.540
gotta go. Now I'm becoming more of an advocate,

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because a man I haven't seen in seven years,

344
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he's starting to come back.

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He's never gonna be the same person,

346
00:23:48.700 --> 00:23:52.480
but lots of him is still the same, lots. The man I married,

347
00:23:52.480 --> 00:23:54.800
the man that I fell in love with, he's in there,

348
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I see him a lot more now that he's not on any pills

349
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than I did for seven years.

350
00:24:01.520 --> 00:24:04.860
Decisions out there, like in training, there are real

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00:24:05.400 --> 00:24:07.400
consequences that you can't get back.

352
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And that's what happened

353
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Easter weekend in 2007. It was a fucking terrible weekend. We hear a

354
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blast, and then find out that six guys are blown up and they're

355
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all dead and you're like, "You're not too far away from it."

356
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And it was a big blast.

357
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And then all the drills go out the window. All the drills go

358
00:24:34.570 --> 00:24:38.060
out the window, and everybody's at risk, and there's no way you cannot

359
00:24:38.060 --> 00:24:42.780
go downrange. So let's put the blade down on the biggest vehicle there

360
00:24:42.780 --> 00:24:44.740
and clear an emergency lane up. And

361
00:24:45.940 --> 00:24:49.100
find myself in the dark with an infrared glow stick for a Black

362
00:24:49.100 --> 00:24:52.020
Hawk to land, to pick up my buddies that I was supposed to

363
00:24:52.020 --> 00:24:54.600
make stay on the other side that fucking ditch. And there's one VSA and

364
00:24:54.635 --> 00:24:56.970
one guy still alive, and you think, "Okay, we're getting one out," but by

365
00:24:56.980 --> 00:24:59.780
the time you

366
00:25:05.210 --> 00:25:09.640
got to the Black Hawk from the vehicle, he was dead. There's two

367
00:25:09.650 --> 00:25:14.580
VSAs heading to Kandahar Airfield for a ramp ceremony that

368
00:25:15.320 --> 00:25:19.060
should have been sitting in their vehicles until the sun came up. And

369
00:25:19.060 --> 00:25:20.840
that was a bullet I had to swallow.

370
00:25:23.640 --> 00:25:26.000
That's fucking war. So I came back from that,

371
00:25:27.660 --> 00:25:31.980
the summer of 2007, was diagnosed with PTSD.

372
00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:36.480
That was three years in the pharmaceutical chain. I took

373
00:25:37.160 --> 00:25:39.280
nine pills a day for three solid years

374
00:25:40.300 --> 00:25:45.720
as a member of the army, prescribed by army doctors. SSRIs and benzos,

375
00:25:45.720 --> 00:25:51.410
like Clonazepam, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Seroquel, Abilify, trazodone, Risperdal.

376
00:25:51.493 --> 00:25:52.340
Try it all.

377
00:25:53.420 --> 00:25:54.000
I'm not sure how

378
00:25:55.060 --> 00:26:01.020
they're treating us. The symptoms of PTSD with the medication that I have

379
00:26:01.120 --> 00:26:05.660
witnessed and found, cause more problems, not relieve problems.

380
00:26:07.560 --> 00:26:11.800
Myself and my peers, and my friends became zombies on these type of

381
00:26:11.800 --> 00:26:18.220
medications: Fat zombies, lazy, fat zombies, like fucking beyond.

382
00:26:19.020 --> 00:26:19.620
And

383
00:26:21.440 --> 00:26:24.680
you're in a fog almost, you can't really fucking

384
00:26:25.580 --> 00:26:29.980
grasp the here and now, it doesn't... There is no real fucking here

385
00:26:29.980 --> 00:26:33.210
and now, there's kind of a fog you're in, and you're just lethargically

386
00:26:33.220 --> 00:26:38.360
moving through time. You're existing, you're not really fucking living life

387
00:26:38.780 --> 00:26:43.680
and doing anything. So after three years of this fog and destruction

388
00:26:44.640 --> 00:26:47.760
of my life, I came back with a little bit of clarity,

389
00:26:47.770 --> 00:26:51.360
and at the age of 31, I put cannabis to my lips.

390
00:26:52.920 --> 00:26:56.960
And I took a big puff, and it was the first time in

391
00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:01.140
three years that my brain relaxed and my physiological body

392
00:27:02.340 --> 00:27:08.020
stopped being tense. And I smoked so much that night, I puked and

393
00:27:08.020 --> 00:27:11.000
I slept good and I woke up and I said, "Get me more."

394
00:27:13.880 --> 00:27:17.760
And over the next year to two years, I got off of every

395
00:27:17.760 --> 00:27:20.400
single pharmaceutical and I haven't looked back since.

396
00:27:23.700 --> 00:27:26.220
A lot of people join the military and they say, "Oh I just

397
00:27:26.220 --> 00:27:30.280
wanna serve my country. I want to do good for other people."

398
00:27:31.400 --> 00:27:35.340
And that's really nice, that's fine and dandy, I think that's really noble.

399
00:27:35.940 --> 00:27:39.630
That's the thing people say, and I think it's the politically correct thing

400
00:27:39.810 --> 00:27:43.000
to say. Myself, I didn't join for any of those reasons.

401
00:27:43.960 --> 00:27:47.720
I joined the military and I represent those guys that basically joined 'cause

402
00:27:47.720 --> 00:27:50.580
they wanted to get in a good gunfight. That's what I wanted to

403
00:27:50.580 --> 00:27:55.220
do, that's what my life revolved around, that's what I... When my head

404
00:27:55.220 --> 00:27:57.360
hit the pillow at night, what I thought about was,

405
00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:00.120
"Can I win a fight to the death, and where do I gotta

406
00:28:00.120 --> 00:28:01.760
go to make that happen?"

407
00:28:03.560 --> 00:28:06.180
I know that's not politically correct, but that's just the truth.

408
00:28:06.640 --> 00:28:08.420
And I think there's a lot of us out here that...

409
00:28:08.760 --> 00:28:10.920
That we're just born that way, and that's what we do,

410
00:28:12.100 --> 00:28:15.120
and then when that gets taken away, where do we go?

411
00:28:15.600 --> 00:28:17.500
What do we do? 'Cause I'm not a criminal, I live by an

412
00:28:17.500 --> 00:28:20.400
ethos. I don't just wanna walk around and shoot people.

413
00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:30.280
I like that Patton's army type of mentality, I like that General Mattis

414
00:28:31.040 --> 00:28:32.020
mentality of,

415
00:28:33.300 --> 00:28:34.880
"Do what it takes, get the job done,

416
00:28:37.140 --> 00:28:37.900
live by your wits,

417
00:28:39.080 --> 00:28:43.160
and let your grit drive you." I wanted to lead troops in battle,

418
00:28:44.080 --> 00:28:47.720
that was what I longed to do, that was where I felt my

419
00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:48.580
destiny was.

420
00:28:53.960 --> 00:28:56.400
Before I was medically discharged from the United States Army,

421
00:28:57.320 --> 00:29:02.920
I served as a 37 Foxtrot, which is a tactical psychological operations specialist.

422
00:29:03.380 --> 00:29:05.400
And before that I served in the infantry.

423
00:29:06.120 --> 00:29:09.560
I went to Fort Benning, Georgia, also attended Airborne School there,

424
00:29:10.020 --> 00:29:12.920
later I served with the 82nd Airborne Division, and these days

425
00:29:13.580 --> 00:29:19.000
I'm a warfighter activist. Easy 104.1, your hometown radio station. It is

426
00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:23.240
the Johnny B and Dave show and we are joined by a special

427
00:29:23.250 --> 00:29:31.260
guest. A radio guy, author, war fighter, marijuana enthusiast, not enthusiast,

428
00:29:31.310 --> 00:29:33.810
but... Advocate. Advocate, thank you, that's the word I was looking for.

429
00:29:33.840 --> 00:29:35.960
Activist. Boone Cutler. How are you doing, man? How are you doing? Good

430
00:29:36.002 --> 00:29:38.300
morning. Welcome. So thrilled to have you on the show. I'm trying to

431
00:29:38.300 --> 00:29:42.320
be a knowledge olobist. You do know a lot... I'm working at the

432
00:29:42.320 --> 00:29:45.860
knowledge oloby. Listen, you are a guy that knows a lot about a

433
00:29:45.860 --> 00:29:48.640
lot of stuff, 'cause you're a psy ops guy. Yeah. I was a psy operator in

434
00:29:48.677 --> 00:29:51.720
the United States Army... Here's the thing, in the United States Army, I

435
00:29:51.720 --> 00:29:55.600
was trained to go into countries, develop a theme and a message to

436
00:29:55.640 --> 00:29:59.400
influence attitudes that change behavior in other countries, that was my

437
00:29:59.400 --> 00:30:02.200
job. You got a new version of the book coming up. Yeah, get

438
00:30:02.200 --> 00:30:05.420
ready for "Call Sign Voodoo", that's my new book coming out.

439
00:30:05.420 --> 00:30:09.050
It's about a lot of psychological operations, some stuff I did in Iraq and

440
00:30:09.089 --> 00:30:11.500
how it affected the United States. Super, super interesting. Boone, thanks

441
00:30:11.500 --> 00:30:14.010
for spending some time with us today. Yeah. Thanks Boone. My pleasure. We'll

442
00:30:14.020 --> 00:30:15.260
get back to music now on Easy

443
00:30:25.490 --> 00:30:33.120
104.1. Cool. By far the worst time in my life was Walter Reed Army

444
00:30:33.120 --> 00:30:36.380
Medical Center. I was there for two years after I left Iraq.

445
00:30:36.540 --> 00:30:37.480
When I got hurt,

446
00:30:38.660 --> 00:30:41.160
there wasn't much to it, I ran around a corner and I ran

447
00:30:41.160 --> 00:30:44.620
into a mortar, and boom, it exploded and

448
00:30:45.460 --> 00:30:48.720
it rocked my world a little bit, and that's why I was at Walter Reed for

449
00:30:48.720 --> 00:30:53.580
that. It was TBI, traumatic brain injury, it was PTSD, multiple orthopedic

450
00:30:53.580 --> 00:30:57.480
injuries that I'd sustained during the tour. And all these things were...

451
00:30:58.660 --> 00:31:01.440
It was what they refer to as polytrauma. It was a whole bunch

452
00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:04.380
of different systems that were out of whack or injured. And

453
00:31:04.940 --> 00:31:07.740
because of the treatment, for one, it caused problems in another,

454
00:31:07.740 --> 00:31:12.660
and it just creates this cycle of all bad, all bad.

455
00:31:13.120 --> 00:31:16.280
And I don't think anybody at Walter Reed was necessarily trying to do

456
00:31:16.840 --> 00:31:18.680
anything negative or

457
00:31:19.920 --> 00:31:23.160
less than standard of care for me. I just think that they had

458
00:31:23.160 --> 00:31:27.170
a lot of wounded and there just weren't enough people to deal with all the

459
00:31:27.244 --> 00:31:33.610
wounded, and guys were severely wounded. In today's modern war, survival

460
00:31:33.620 --> 00:31:37.880
has become an issue, because those guys that would have died on the

461
00:31:37.880 --> 00:31:42.500
battlefield are surviving the battlefield. In Iraq, you could be at a level

462
00:31:42.500 --> 00:31:47.289
one trauma unit in very short order from the battlefield. And so guys

463
00:31:47.331 --> 00:31:53.240
were surviving. And I don't think that this era of military medicine was

464
00:31:53.240 --> 00:31:55.360
ready to receive

465
00:31:57.760 --> 00:32:01.120
that type of trauma because we weren't dying.

466
00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:06.325
So is it good that we were surviving? Yes, absolutely, absolutely,

467
00:32:06.387 --> 00:32:07.100
it was good.

468
00:32:08.780 --> 00:32:11.920
But there's a cause and effect, and the other side of the effect

469
00:32:11.920 --> 00:32:12.220
is,

470
00:32:13.740 --> 00:32:16.580
they didn't know how to treat us. And there were too many of

471
00:32:16.580 --> 00:32:20.040
us, and nobody had prepared for that many wounded.

472
00:32:21.660 --> 00:32:25.020
So we got a lot of drugs, we got a lot of drugs.

473
00:32:26.620 --> 00:32:29.460
So I go in, I see this psychiatrist for the very first time,

474
00:32:30.660 --> 00:32:34.960
first psych appointment at Walter Reed. And he says, "Let's talk about your

475
00:32:34.960 --> 00:32:38.580
PTSD." I'm like, "I ain't one of those guys, I don't have PTSD.

476
00:32:38.800 --> 00:32:41.740
I'm not some punk ass little bitch. I don't have PTSD,

477
00:32:41.740 --> 00:32:44.800
I have a traumatic brain injury, I need to see a neurologist."

478
00:32:45.760 --> 00:32:47.660
And I definitely had an attitude with him.

479
00:32:49.380 --> 00:32:52.620
He didn't give me another word, he spun around in his chair,

480
00:32:53.580 --> 00:32:54.600
took out a piece of paper,

481
00:32:56.100 --> 00:32:59.020
handed me that piece of paper, said, "Go down to the pharmacy,

482
00:32:59.020 --> 00:33:02.680
fill this, come back next week." I said, "What is it,

483
00:33:02.680 --> 00:33:04.540
doc?" He says, "It'll help you sleep."

484
00:33:05.960 --> 00:33:10.030
I was all welcoming of sleep 'cause I wasn't sleeping, hadn't slept for

485
00:33:10.040 --> 00:33:10.440
months.

486
00:33:12.380 --> 00:33:14.420
So I went down to the pharmacy, I got that script,

487
00:33:15.280 --> 00:33:21.720
and it was Seroquel. And from my first dose of Seroquel, it was

488
00:33:21.720 --> 00:33:32.120
a downhill slide. From that first dose, my

489
00:33:32.860 --> 00:33:35.920
will to do things the way I wanted to do just

490
00:33:36.820 --> 00:33:37.460
slipped away,

491
00:33:39.200 --> 00:33:43.260
and from there it was a plethora of other drugs on top of

492
00:33:43.260 --> 00:33:47.380
the Seroquel. Well, now we skip a few years ahead, and I'm back

493
00:33:47.380 --> 00:33:50.520
on the block. I'm in a VA, I've been

494
00:33:51.140 --> 00:33:55.620
medically released from the military, no longer on active duty, trying to

495
00:33:55.620 --> 00:33:58.540
find an identity in the world again. Meanwhile, I was spun out of

496
00:33:58.540 --> 00:34:02.160
my mind, not just because of the drugs, but because I'm still dealing

497
00:34:02.160 --> 00:34:05.020
with all the injuries that I had before

498
00:34:05.940 --> 00:34:09.280
that people took shortcuts on, that didn't get resolved.

499
00:34:10.520 --> 00:34:12.660
So I still have all the injuries and all of the problems,

500
00:34:12.740 --> 00:34:15.320
but now I have a huge drug problem on top of it.

501
00:34:16.720 --> 00:34:17.560
I'd had enough,

502
00:34:18.600 --> 00:34:21.040
enough. I did not care anymore.

503
00:34:22.560 --> 00:34:24.540
And they come around to me with all the drugs

504
00:34:25.640 --> 00:34:26.800
and I'd say, "No, thank you."

505
00:34:28.040 --> 00:34:30.880
They would tell me, "Well, you have the choice, against medical advice,

506
00:34:30.880 --> 00:34:33.620
AMA, you don't have to take the drugs, but we don't recommend it,

507
00:34:34.400 --> 00:34:36.980
you're gonna go crazy." And I say, "Hey, the door is locked, let's

508
00:34:36.980 --> 00:34:40.940
go crazy, let's see what happens." And I went a little crazy.

509
00:34:42.060 --> 00:34:44.300
But by the end of the 17 days, I was off the drugs.

510
00:34:45.780 --> 00:34:48.620
Well I wasn't sleeping. And I was at work, and this young kid

511
00:34:48.620 --> 00:34:51.400
came up to me and he said, "Man, you look like hell,

512
00:34:51.400 --> 00:34:54.000
what's going on?" And I said, "I can't sleep."

513
00:34:54.720 --> 00:34:58.500
He said, "Why don't you smoke some weed?" And I was so offended

514
00:34:59.120 --> 00:35:01.200
that this guy would look at me and think I was one of

515
00:35:01.200 --> 00:35:03.580
those people that smokes weed.

516
00:35:04.700 --> 00:35:06.100
"No, I don't smoke weed."

517
00:35:07.700 --> 00:35:11.540
Then I went another night without sleep. And as I'm laying there,

518
00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:16.200
I'm reviewing all the things I have done to try and get sleep.

519
00:35:16.700 --> 00:35:20.820
So I'm thinking of all the herbal stuff I did, holistic stuff I

520
00:35:20.820 --> 00:35:25.360
did, all the drugs they... Every drug they gave me, the NyQuil, the

521
00:35:25.360 --> 00:35:29.500
alcohol. In the morning time, looking at the sunrise and watching it set

522
00:35:29.500 --> 00:35:32.920
to reset my circadian rhythms. I did it all,

523
00:35:33.680 --> 00:35:34.720
none of it worked.

524
00:35:37.240 --> 00:35:38.760
So I went to that kid the next day and I said,

525
00:35:38.760 --> 00:35:39.740
"Okay, give me some weed."

526
00:35:41.680 --> 00:35:43.140
And that night I slept five hours,

527
00:35:44.160 --> 00:35:52.500
five hours, five uninterrupted, dream free, nightmare unplagued hours.

528
00:35:53.600 --> 00:35:56.260
I hadn't slept five hours in five years

529
00:35:56.840 --> 00:35:57.200
like that,

530
00:35:58.300 --> 00:36:00.160
at least. Imagine that.

531
00:36:03.020 --> 00:36:04.180
But I slept five hours

532
00:36:05.600 --> 00:36:10.280
off something that had been demonized my whole life.

533
00:36:23.000 --> 00:36:26.898
My name is Joey Gilbert, I'm a lawyer actually here in Reno,

534
00:36:26.973 --> 00:36:30.200
Nevada. But I was a former professional fighter.

535
00:36:32.200 --> 00:36:35.920
And after I retired from fighting, I started practicing law full time.

536
00:36:36.280 --> 00:36:40.240
And then in 2013, our governor here in Nevada signed a medical cannabis

537
00:36:40.240 --> 00:36:44.460
bill to provide cannabis to the people of Nevada, and I started working

538
00:36:44.460 --> 00:36:48.300
on cannabis at that time. What got me interested in the cannabis movement

539
00:36:48.300 --> 00:36:53.480
was veterans. I started getting lots of pro bono cases that involved veterans

540
00:36:53.740 --> 00:36:56.900
that had been doing things like self medicating. And by that I mean,

541
00:36:56.900 --> 00:36:59.480
they come back, they had all kinds of issues going on

542
00:37:00.020 --> 00:37:02.580
from their service, and they were trying to figure out a way to

543
00:37:02.580 --> 00:37:05.880
deal with it, and there just wasn't enough help or enough services back

544
00:37:05.880 --> 00:37:10.200
here to get them through. The VA was mailing these guys bottles of

545
00:37:10.210 --> 00:37:13.560
pills, about this big, and I was just seeing an epidemic start.

546
00:37:13.600 --> 00:37:15.820
I got involved because my father asked me...

547
00:37:16.460 --> 00:37:19.100
When your father is a commander in the Marine Corps, he more tells

548
00:37:19.100 --> 00:37:21.320
you. So he said, "Son, I got some cases I need some help

549
00:37:22.460 --> 00:37:26.840
So after almost 31 pro bono cases and taking these guys across Nevada,

550
00:37:27.100 --> 00:37:30.280
and beating these things, I started realizing there was a pattern.

551
00:37:30.290 --> 00:37:33.630
And I said, "What's going on here?" And I looked back and said, "Why are

552
00:37:33.640 --> 00:37:36.660
these guys getting in trouble across the country, across the state for these

553
00:37:36.660 --> 00:37:39.440
little things?" And like I just said, it was self medication,

554
00:37:39.440 --> 00:37:44.130
they were using alcohol, prescription drugs, over the counter drugs, Adderall

555
00:37:44.193 --> 00:37:47.680
from their brother, anything they could get their hands on to try and

556
00:37:47.680 --> 00:37:49.980
get this change, this head change to try and figure out what was

557
00:37:49.980 --> 00:37:53.480
going on. And so based on that and talking with people,

558
00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:56.220
I said to a few of these vets, "Why don't you try cannabis?"

559
00:37:56.500 --> 00:38:00.640
And then what happened from there was just magic. I have text messages

560
00:38:00.640 --> 00:38:04.320
in my phone where wives say to me, "Thank you for my husband back,

561
00:38:04.620 --> 00:38:06.980
it was the first time we were intimate again in four years.

562
00:38:06.980 --> 00:38:10.580
Thank you for my kids' father back, it's the first time I've seen

563
00:38:10.580 --> 00:38:13.380
him laugh or go with his kids somewhere since he got back from

564
00:38:13.380 --> 00:38:13.800
Iraq."

565
00:38:16.620 --> 00:38:20.580
So the biggest problem that we faced with veterans, with guys and girls

566
00:38:20.580 --> 00:38:24.520
that served, was they didn't wanna have this designation of having PTSD,

567
00:38:24.520 --> 00:38:27.220
getting a medical card, and then having to lose

568
00:38:28.360 --> 00:38:31.340
rights or lose access to certain things. And as everyone knows,

569
00:38:31.350 --> 00:38:35.200
marijuana is illegal at the federal level, so these guys could potentially

570
00:38:35.200 --> 00:38:39.260
lose out on veterans benefits if they use something that actually was much

571
00:38:39.270 --> 00:38:44.300
safer, non addictive, non toxic, not lethal, but here was the conundrum:

572
00:38:44.300 --> 00:38:47.460
Do I use something that really helps me and makes my quality of

573
00:38:47.460 --> 00:38:52.380
life so much better or do I risk losing my benefits?

574
00:38:52.380 --> 00:38:55.360
And it was a problem. It created a lot of problems.

575
00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:03.180
Cannabis took a lot of guys out of a funk and gave them

576
00:39:03.180 --> 00:39:06.720
hope again. It made them feel like they could deal with whatever it

577
00:39:06.720 --> 00:39:09.680
was they were dealing with without being a zombie, without having to take

578
00:39:09.680 --> 00:39:12.120
these meds that made their eyes white out,

579
00:39:12.900 --> 00:39:15.200
white in the corner of their mouths, and they just sat there.

580
00:39:15.210 --> 00:39:19.420
And as everyone knows, we were losing 22 plus a day,

581
00:39:19.420 --> 00:39:22.640
minimum. So that was the issue. And I really got to see

582
00:39:23.240 --> 00:39:26.180
people I knew, like I said, like Boone, and here we are,

583
00:39:26.180 --> 00:39:31.400
introduced cannabis to him. Man, everything slowed down. Like you said,

584
00:39:31.400 --> 00:39:34.480
the anxiety went away. Ability to go out and just do the simple

585
00:39:34.480 --> 00:39:37.000
normal things that a lot of us take for granted. So that's what

586
00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:40.760
I noticed. If anything, I could say anything, it just takes the edge

587
00:39:40.760 --> 00:39:44.180
off. It's not a silver bullet, it's not gonna solve everything for everyone,

588
00:39:44.180 --> 00:39:45.780
but the ability to

589
00:39:48.340 --> 00:39:51.360
enjoy your life, you know what I'm saying? To really be comfortable in

590
00:39:51.360 --> 00:39:54.500
the moment, is what cannabis does. And it's what it did for Boone. And

591
00:39:54.500 --> 00:39:57.380
that's what I've learned, is that if you're gonna help these guys get

592
00:39:57.380 --> 00:40:01.620
off the dope, and that's what it is, the pharmaceutical stuff is pure

593
00:40:01.620 --> 00:40:04.480
crap, it's killing these guys, it's absolutely killing them. They know it,

594
00:40:05.500 --> 00:40:07.000
and they won't let them use something that will help them.

595
00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:11.520
And so what I noticed the biggest sways was when he ran out

596
00:40:11.520 --> 00:40:13.800
of product, and I'd get a call from his wife saying,

597
00:40:13.800 --> 00:40:15.820
"Oh my god, he's in a bad spot right now." And I would

598
00:40:15.820 --> 00:40:17.700
say, "How is he on his meds?" "He hasn't had them for three

599
00:40:17.700 --> 00:40:20.260
days." "Why didn't he call me?" "He doesn't wanna ask you for anything."

600
00:40:20.420 --> 00:40:23.500
Which is textbook for anybody that came out of the military.

601
00:40:23.510 --> 00:40:27.380
Veterans don't want your sympathy, they don't want you to... They don't

602
00:40:27.380 --> 00:40:30.300
want your pity. Get out of their way, respect them, and they're gonna

603
00:40:30.300 --> 00:40:32.480
be fine. And so that's what I really noticed. And that's part of

604
00:40:32.480 --> 00:40:35.800
the problem as well, because cannabis isn't everywhere, it isn't easy to

605
00:40:35.800 --> 00:40:38.200
get. They don't like asking anybody for anything.

606
00:40:38.780 --> 00:40:41.020
And at some point,

607
00:40:43.360 --> 00:40:46.540
I'm thinking to myself, "Why is this illegal?

608
00:40:47.980 --> 00:40:51.500
How is this wrong? What is the problem here?

609
00:40:52.100 --> 00:40:53.620
Because, I don't really see one."

610
00:40:54.920 --> 00:40:58.160
And all those feelings, all those thoughts, all that

611
00:40:59.560 --> 00:41:02.940
junk that people put in my head, I started to question.

612
00:41:04.580 --> 00:41:08.280
And every time I questioned it and I researched it on my own,

613
00:41:09.580 --> 00:41:12.780
I realized those people were just lying. Some of them didn't know they

614
00:41:12.780 --> 00:41:16.320
were lying, they were just repeating somebody else's lie, but ultimately

615
00:41:16.320 --> 00:41:17.920
it was one big lie.

616
00:41:19.020 --> 00:41:22.620
People don't realize that cannabis was available in America, medically,

617
00:41:22.700 --> 00:41:26.600
from the middle 1800s, about 1839, when it first got introduced to western

618
00:41:26.600 --> 00:41:30.080
medicine, all the way to the 1930s, in fact, up to 1937,

619
00:41:30.080 --> 00:41:31.100
when they put through the Marijuana Tax Act.

620
00:41:31.880 --> 00:41:35.960
Be careful how you use it, for to grow hemp legally, you must

621
00:41:35.960 --> 00:41:40.440
have a federal registration and tax stamp. This is provided for in your

622
00:41:40.440 --> 00:41:45.720
contract. Ask your AAA committeeman or your county agent about it. It was

623
00:41:45.720 --> 00:41:50.120
available, it had to have specific labeling instructions, it was a medicine,

624
00:41:50.220 --> 00:41:53.340
but it was in no way, shape, or form prohibited. In 1937,

625
00:41:53.340 --> 00:41:57.160
they passed the Marijuana Control Act, and what that did is tax cannabis

626
00:41:57.160 --> 00:42:00.640
and tax hemp so incredibly that it effectively put it out of business.

627
00:42:01.040 --> 00:42:03.960
The excise tax was so high, no one could afford to grow it.

628
00:42:04.460 --> 00:42:08.330
So, when you talk about cannabis legalization and the history of prohibition,

629
00:42:08.340 --> 00:42:13.780
it's an ugly past. It's very much steeped in racism and with the

630
00:42:13.780 --> 00:42:18.500
whole Reefer Madness movie, and all that propaganda, which we still see

631
00:42:18.820 --> 00:42:21.120
present in the stigma we have today. So

632
00:42:21.680 --> 00:42:27.140
basically, Reefer Madness alluded to the fact that if white women use cannabis,

633
00:42:27.140 --> 00:42:31.260
they'll wanna sleep with black men, or they'll be jumping out of the

634
00:42:31.600 --> 00:42:36.440
window or they're gonna be playing the piano crazy, and it's not true.

635
00:42:36.440 --> 00:42:40.540
It was not based on fact, but it did have that hysteria effect. All

636
00:42:40.540 --> 00:42:43.700
of these devoted to marijuana records.

637
00:42:47.560 --> 00:42:48.620
Here is an example.

638
00:42:49.940 --> 00:42:53.310
A 16 year old lad, apprehended in the act of staging a hold

639
00:42:53.320 --> 00:42:56.700
up. 16 years old and a marijuana addict.

640
00:42:57.770 --> 00:43:03.460
Here is a most tragic case. Yes, I remember. Just a young boy. Under

641
00:43:03.460 --> 00:43:07.160
the influence of the drug, he killed his entire family with an axe. And

642
00:43:07.160 --> 00:43:09.900
that carried on way into the '60s. In the '60s, they used the

643
00:43:09.900 --> 00:43:12.540
same prohibition against cannabis to go at the hippies, and again,

644
00:43:12.540 --> 00:43:15.400
people of color. So it's been rampant through the federal government to

645
00:43:15.400 --> 00:43:22.780
target minorities through cannabis. So put simply, from 1952, 1956 to 1970,

646
00:43:22.940 --> 00:43:27.180
the United States government went on a campaign to systematically eradicate

647
00:43:27.440 --> 00:43:31.380
any form of hemp or cannabis in the United States, period. And that

648
00:43:31.380 --> 00:43:34.960
took it even a step further, because in the 1970 Controlled Substances Act,

649
00:43:35.220 --> 00:43:40.020
they said that cannabis had no medical value, nothing. None whatsoever.

650
00:43:40.060 --> 00:43:41.050
Which is absolutely ludicrous.

651
00:43:42.280 --> 00:43:47.080
When the pot smoker uses that good material, the smoke carries a variety

652
00:43:47.080 --> 00:43:53.040
of chemical compounds to the lungs. Within seconds, the THC begins to circulate

653
00:43:53.040 --> 00:43:57.210
throughout the body, carried by the fatty particles in the bloodstream.

654
00:43:57.220 --> 00:44:01.380
Almost instantly, there is an effect on the brain. As with alcohol,

655
00:44:01.680 --> 00:44:06.560
the human thought process is chemically altered. This state of intoxication

656
00:44:06.560 --> 00:44:11.260
is what getting stoned is all about. Along with the intoxication,

657
00:44:11.400 --> 00:44:16.020
the heartbeat increases dramatically. This is why many scientists believe

658
00:44:16.020 --> 00:44:20.420
that no one with a heart condition should use marijuana. Cannabis is a

659
00:44:20.420 --> 00:44:26.880
completely harmless plant, however it's been criminalized over all of these

660
00:44:26.880 --> 00:44:30.920
years, by all this negative propaganda that's not true. We've been lied

661
00:44:30.920 --> 00:44:35.540
to all these years. Leading medical researchers are coming to the conclusion

662
00:44:36.280 --> 00:44:41.240
that marijuana, pot, grass, whatever you wanna call it, is probably the

663
00:44:41.240 --> 00:44:45.260
most dangerous drug in the United States, and we haven't begun to find

664
00:44:45.260 --> 00:44:48.860
out all of the ill effects, but they are permanent ill effects.

665
00:44:49.840 --> 00:44:53.440
All types of things that we've just been fed to and now they've

666
00:44:53.440 --> 00:44:58.440
been ingrained in our mind, so it's hard to believe that this drug

667
00:44:58.480 --> 00:45:02.380
that we've been told is awful, it's terrible, it's a Schedule 1 drug,

668
00:45:02.380 --> 00:45:06.360
meaning it has no medical properties. And have you seen what marijuana does

669
00:45:06.360 --> 00:45:12.000
to some people? Oh yeah, you've seen them, total burnouts. It slows you

670
00:45:12.060 --> 00:45:16.360
down, it softens your mind, and in my neighborhood, you need to move

671
00:45:16.360 --> 00:45:22.900
quickly and think fast. Drugs, it's a bloody shame. When I was 10

672
00:45:22.900 --> 00:45:25.960
years old, my babysitter and her friends would do drugs in front of

673
00:45:25.960 --> 00:45:26.240
me.

674
00:45:27.360 --> 00:45:30.520
I really looked up to her, I wanted to be like her.

675
00:45:30.980 --> 00:45:33.300
I would talk her into letting me get high with them.

676
00:45:33.500 --> 00:45:37.380
That's all it took. After that, I moved on to pills, speed,

677
00:45:37.380 --> 00:45:42.960
cocaine, mushrooms, you name it, I took it. It's just... At this point

678
00:45:42.960 --> 00:45:48.460
now, we're fighting against years of brainwashing that has happened, and

679
00:45:49.320 --> 00:45:54.660
it's slowly but surely reversing. Now we're seeing a resurgence of the use

680
00:45:54.660 --> 00:45:57.220
of marijuana, we're seeing the end of prohibition, and

681
00:45:57.940 --> 00:46:01.220
people are being baffled by the fact that they were lied to

682
00:46:02.060 --> 00:46:04.620
for so many years, they grew up being lied to.

683
00:46:05.350 --> 00:46:10.160
This is your brain on drugs. The Nancy Reagan campaign, the War on

684
00:46:10.160 --> 00:46:15.180
Drugs, which affected certain communities more than others. There's gross

685
00:46:15.180 --> 00:46:19.580
disparities in how the War on Drugs was applied across our country.

686
00:46:20.820 --> 00:46:25.540
Meanwhile, around me, war fighters in my community are killing themselves

687
00:46:25.540 --> 00:46:27.040
at a rate of 22 a day,

688
00:46:29.220 --> 00:46:31.040
and I'm like, "I know why,

689
00:46:32.300 --> 00:46:33.360
we should probably fix that."

690
00:46:38.500 --> 00:46:42.160
Janos Victor Lutz is my son, we call him Johnny.

691
00:46:42.900 --> 00:46:43.700
He was a Marine,

692
00:46:46.160 --> 00:46:47.600
and I was a proud Marine Mom.

693
00:46:48.680 --> 00:46:54.760
He deployed to Iraq in 2007 and 2008, came home and

694
00:46:55.720 --> 00:46:59.400
I didn't see too much difference in Johny from that deployment.

695
00:46:59.780 --> 00:47:06.160
It was really a cakewalk compared to his 2009 deployment to Afghanistan.

696
00:47:06.760 --> 00:47:08.600
We lost 14 men.

697
00:47:18.160 --> 00:47:18.740
They had

698
00:47:21.140 --> 00:47:24.020
some big firefights, and they couldn't get them

699
00:47:25.160 --> 00:47:27.840
food, water, they couldn't get them ammo,

700
00:47:29.340 --> 00:47:33.360
because they were so far out, and when the caravans would come with

701
00:47:33.360 --> 00:47:36.000
food and ammo, they were getting blown up,

702
00:47:36.540 --> 00:47:39.980
they weren't making it, the guys, they lost 40 pounds.

703
00:47:40.660 --> 00:47:45.220
When Johnny came home, all the families greeted them. You could instantly

704
00:47:45.220 --> 00:47:56.990
tell that they were all shell shocked, they were just expressionless. Yeah.

705
00:47:57.000 --> 00:48:01.820
Yeah, he was totally different when he came home, I noticed that before

706
00:48:01.820 --> 00:48:05.080
it got dark, all the curtains had to be drawn,

707
00:48:05.640 --> 00:48:07.060
all the windows had to be shut.

708
00:48:09.120 --> 00:48:13.120
And I put undue pressure on him because I would say things like, "What

709
00:48:13.120 --> 00:48:16.380
do you mean you don't wanna go? Come on, Johnny. We always would

710
00:48:16.380 --> 00:48:19.960
love to go out to... We would fine dine." And

711
00:48:20.800 --> 00:48:24.440
he didn't wanna do that anymore, and I just didn't understand why.

712
00:48:25.980 --> 00:48:32.600
Johnny returned from his second deployment November of 2009 and was

713
00:48:33.140 --> 00:48:38.940
subsequently diagnosed with severe PTSD, and TBI, which is traumatic brain

714
00:48:40.060 --> 00:48:42.600
And their treatment was to put my son on

715
00:48:43.120 --> 00:48:49.720
about 18 different medications. He was on antidepressants, SSRIs, pain medication,

716
00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:53.240
it was a very dangerous cocktail of drugs.

717
00:48:53.890 --> 00:48:57.900
So it was still not working for my son. In June of 2010

718
00:48:57.920 --> 00:49:02.040
they gave him a drug called Klonopin. And a week later he attempted

719
00:49:02.040 --> 00:49:05.720
suicide, they found him just as he stopped breathing.

720
00:49:06.540 --> 00:49:12.560
The doctor knew that the causation for his suicide was the Klonopin, and

721
00:49:12.560 --> 00:49:17.820
in fact wrote in Johnny's chart, "Do not prescribe Mr. Lutz Klonopin because

722
00:49:17.820 --> 00:49:22.880
it'll be detrimental to his health," but never told my son, never told

723
00:49:22.880 --> 00:49:28.100
the family. So my son was left to believe that he wanted to

724
00:49:28.100 --> 00:49:30.280
die because that's what he wanted to do.

725
00:49:31.060 --> 00:49:34.660
Fast forward, Johnny was medically retired November of 2011,

726
00:49:36.300 --> 00:49:40.920
came home and he was still on many different medications, but the summer

727
00:49:40.920 --> 00:49:45.560
of 2012... In the spring, rather, Johnny decided he wanted to get off

728
00:49:45.560 --> 00:49:50.480
everything, and he did. He went cold turkey, got off all his meds,

729
00:49:50.490 --> 00:49:55.460
except for a low dose of morphine that he would take as needed.

730
00:49:56.480 --> 00:50:02.340
And we had a wonderful summer, we traveled. Johnny was laughing again,

731
00:50:02.440 --> 00:50:07.620
joking. And we traveled to Colorado, we went whitewater rafting. It was

732
00:50:07.620 --> 00:50:16.010
just a wonderful summer, I had Johnny back. Johnny flourished, he thrived,

733
00:50:16.195 --> 00:50:19.600
he was just doing wonderfully. At the end of the summer,

734
00:50:19.600 --> 00:50:23.860
though, something triggered his PTSD and he became depressed.

735
00:50:24.680 --> 00:50:28.280
And on January 1st, he called me and he said, "Mom,

736
00:50:28.700 --> 00:50:31.100
I need you to lock up all the guns in the house and

737
00:50:31.100 --> 00:50:34.360
I need you to take my pain meds, and when I need them,

738
00:50:34.360 --> 00:50:38.400
I'll ask you for them." I said, "Okay, honey." And

739
00:50:39.280 --> 00:50:43.380
he said, "I'm scared, Mom." Three days later, on January 4th,

740
00:50:43.900 --> 00:50:48.360
he went to the VA on Commercial Boulevard, and his medical records read,

741
00:50:48.524 --> 00:50:54.480
"Mr. Lutz presents teary eyed and well groomed, he stated that he had

742
00:50:54.480 --> 00:50:57.080
his mom lock up his guns and his meds.

743
00:50:58.260 --> 00:51:04.380
'Well, Mr. Lutz, how are you today?' 'I'm okay,' as the tears were running

744
00:51:04.380 --> 00:51:10.400
down his face." He's clearly not okay. How many chances did that woman

745
00:51:10.400 --> 00:51:14.560
have, how many chances... How many times did my son say,

746
00:51:15.160 --> 00:51:16.080
"Please help me"?

747
00:51:17.880 --> 00:51:24.840
And her response to my son was, "Let's put you on some Klonopin." Then

748
00:51:24.840 --> 00:51:27.020
he goes next door to the back doctor,

749
00:51:28.000 --> 00:51:32.120
and that doctor prescribed my son, gave him in his hand,

750
00:51:32.130 --> 00:51:39.960
90 morphine. So that was on January 1st, so during that week,

751
00:51:40.300 --> 00:51:43.760
he came home, he had a couple of beers, and

752
00:51:44.840 --> 00:51:48.720
he decided to take all his pills and he killed himself.

753
00:51:48.730 --> 00:51:50.020
He overdosed here.

754
00:51:52.240 --> 00:51:55.520
And I could've been in tune to that, but I wasn't.

755
00:51:56.560 --> 00:51:59.180
Nobody was in tune and my son died,

756
00:52:00.112 --> 00:52:02.360
he took his own life because of that drug.

757
00:52:07.070 --> 00:52:11.520
My first Buddy Up, I had four people show up and I said,

758
00:52:11.520 --> 00:52:14.300
"Well, maybe this isn't it", but one of the war fighters there,

759
00:52:14.300 --> 00:52:18.680
Brian Lupo, by the way, marine infantry, he said, "No, Janine,"

760
00:52:18.740 --> 00:52:20.760
he goes, "This is exactly what we need."

761
00:52:22.980 --> 00:52:28.060
I joined the Marine Corps in 2009, got out in 2013.

762
00:52:28.740 --> 00:52:32.420
One of the things that I think really helped me, when it came

763
00:52:32.420 --> 00:52:35.680
to life after the Marine Corps, was the fact that I joined at

764
00:52:35.680 --> 00:52:41.560
25 and not 18. And I didn't have that stress of an 18

765
00:52:41.560 --> 00:52:44.900
year old that enlists when he gets out at 22 or 23 or

766
00:52:44.900 --> 00:52:45.400
whatever.

767
00:52:48.640 --> 00:52:52.360
I still have PTSD from being an infantryman in the Marines.

768
00:52:52.580 --> 00:52:55.940
You see stuff, and you lose brothers, you lose friends,

769
00:52:57.100 --> 00:53:00.640
so a lot of that still weighed on me. It was really tough

770
00:53:00.640 --> 00:53:05.260
to sleep, you have bad dreams. So I'm 34 years old now,

771
00:53:05.680 --> 00:53:09.680
and when I was 32, so about two years ago, a friend of

772
00:53:09.680 --> 00:53:13.020
mine pulls out a bong and he says, "Here, man, you wanna try

773
00:53:13.020 --> 00:53:15.120
this?" and I was like... Or, "You wanna hit this?" and I'm like,

774
00:53:16.020 --> 00:53:19.360
"No, I've never done that before." Literally 32 years old, never smoked

775
00:53:19.440 --> 00:53:23.440
marijuana before, and he's like, "Dude, it's great for PTSD,

776
00:53:24.160 --> 00:53:26.920
it really mellows you out, relaxes you and all this stuff."

777
00:53:26.920 --> 00:53:29.240
And I said, "You know what? Screw it, I'm gonna try it."

778
00:53:29.820 --> 00:53:31.820
Since I got out of the Marine Corps, I don't think I've ever

779
00:53:31.820 --> 00:53:32.440
felt that

780
00:53:33.620 --> 00:53:34.220
normal.

781
00:53:35.320 --> 00:53:37.360
I was able to laugh at things, relax,

782
00:53:39.620 --> 00:53:44.140
had a good time, nothing could aggravate me, I wasn't angry about anything,

783
00:53:44.140 --> 00:53:46.500
I didn't wanna go home and hide in

784
00:53:47.360 --> 00:53:51.540
my house. And so from there I decided I'm gonna try this

785
00:53:52.060 --> 00:53:54.160
on my own. So I got some marijuana and

786
00:53:55.860 --> 00:53:57.080
didn't know what the hell to do with it.

787
00:53:57.880 --> 00:54:02.160
So I went down to the grocery store at the end of my

788
00:54:02.160 --> 00:54:03.360
street and got a

789
00:54:04.760 --> 00:54:07.960
little pipe. And went out on my back patio and smoked,

790
00:54:07.960 --> 00:54:09.720
and was like, "Okay, this

791
00:54:11.200 --> 00:54:13.160
makes me feel good, this makes me feel normal."

792
00:54:14.240 --> 00:54:17.140
Leading up to that, I refused to go to the VA.

793
00:54:18.740 --> 00:54:21.260
I'll go to the VA if something's physically wrong with me,

794
00:54:21.260 --> 00:54:24.360
if I've got a bad cold or... Well, I wouldn't go for a

795
00:54:24.360 --> 00:54:27.260
cold. But if something was really wrong with me, I would go.

796
00:54:27.460 --> 00:54:30.160
But I'm not going to the VA for mental health 'cause

797
00:54:30.680 --> 00:54:33.500
they're just gonna say, "Here's an antidepressant drug, take it

798
00:54:34.280 --> 00:54:38.300
twice a day and come see us in a month." But the side

799
00:54:38.300 --> 00:54:42.520
effects on the drug is suicide... Or suicidal thoughts. What the fuck am

800
00:54:42.520 --> 00:54:45.000
I gonna take that for? "I'm thinking about killing myself." "Well,

801
00:54:45.010 --> 00:54:49.620
here, take Zoloft." Well, what's the side effect on Zoloft? Suicide.

802
00:54:49.630 --> 00:54:56.340
Klonopin, suicide. Paxil, suicide. All these drugs... So I refused to go.

803
00:54:56.960 --> 00:55:02.440
So I started self medicating with marijuana, and I've never felt better.

804
00:55:03.760 --> 00:55:07.320
The reason I got interested in the study was because I've been taking

805
00:55:07.320 --> 00:55:10.620
care of veterans for so long, and I saw that there weren't really

806
00:55:10.620 --> 00:55:12.780
any good treatments for PTSD.

807
00:55:18.640 --> 00:55:24.680
We only have two FDA approved medications on the market, Zoloft and Paxil

808
00:55:24.793 --> 00:55:29.280
are the only meds that actually have an FDA indication for PTSD.

809
00:55:29.800 --> 00:55:33.660
So all these other meds that we throw at PTSD patients

810
00:55:35.040 --> 00:55:40.280
have never really been formally tested in clinical trials for treating PTSD.

811
00:55:40.760 --> 00:55:45.160
Suddenly, these patients feel like guinea pigs, they're just being

812
00:55:46.160 --> 00:55:49.520
pummeled with all these different prescriptions that don't seem to have

813
00:55:49.520 --> 00:55:52.560
any logical method for

814
00:55:53.800 --> 00:55:58.300
how we're using them. And so I began losing a lot of patients

815
00:55:58.300 --> 00:56:03.440
in my own practice to suicide. That's what really woke me up because

816
00:56:04.140 --> 00:56:04.660
I had

817
00:56:06.560 --> 00:56:07.760
patients that I would just...

818
00:56:10.180 --> 00:56:12.960
I don't even know how to describe it. It was just

819
00:56:13.700 --> 00:56:18.840
the heartbreak of all these great young men and women who were ending

820
00:56:18.840 --> 00:56:23.940
their life, and I realized that I had nothing more to offer them,

821
00:56:24.300 --> 00:56:31.080
that we exhausted all the conventional treatments. The epidemic of veteran

822
00:56:31.080 --> 00:56:35.600
suicide is one of the biggest public health crisis that we have in

823
00:56:35.600 --> 00:56:39.260
this country and we don't have any good solutions for it.

824
00:56:39.260 --> 00:56:43.540
And I don't know if cannabis can help curb this epidemic of veteran

825
00:56:43.540 --> 00:56:49.220
suicide. But I hope that we can continue to collect information about this

826
00:56:49.220 --> 00:56:52.460
and see if there's a possibility of looking at that specifically.

827
00:56:52.680 --> 00:56:57.060
Our trial isn't looking at the suicide epidemic, we're just looking at the

828
00:56:57.060 --> 00:57:01.180
question, "Does cannabis reduce the symptoms of PTSD?"

829
00:57:01.740 --> 00:57:06.280
and if so, maybe which strains are best or which strains should be

830
00:57:06.280 --> 00:57:06.900
avoided?

831
00:57:27.500 --> 00:57:28.800
When somebody chooses

832
00:57:30.943 --> 00:57:34.580
suicide because...

833
00:57:35.860 --> 00:57:37.780
It can be for a myriad of reasons.

834
00:57:39.560 --> 00:57:41.940
Whether it was pharmaceutically induced

835
00:57:43.040 --> 00:57:46.020
because, like my son, he took the drugs, that made him

836
00:57:46.600 --> 00:57:48.620
take his life or

837
00:57:49.900 --> 00:57:53.720
for whatever the reason that you decide to do that.

838
00:57:55.640 --> 00:57:56.160
When you...

839
00:57:57.500 --> 00:58:02.700
When somebody dies by suicide, they just transferred everything,

840
00:58:04.040 --> 00:58:11.770
that pain inside them times 10 to their loved ones that they left behind.

841
00:58:11.780 --> 00:58:14.720
For the rest of my life, for the rest of my life,

842
00:58:14.720 --> 00:58:17.520
I have to live without my children

843
00:58:18.760 --> 00:58:19.040
and

844
00:58:20.640 --> 00:58:22.520
it affects me every single day.

845
00:58:24.270 --> 00:58:29.340
You know, you get really angry, you know? You get really

846
00:58:33.610 --> 00:58:37.250
angry. A person could let it...

847
00:58:39.340 --> 00:58:40.420
Make you really angry.

848
00:58:42.720 --> 00:58:46.000
And I'm sure that he did not want

849
00:58:46.520 --> 00:58:50.400
his brother to follow in his footsteps, but that's what happened.

850
00:58:50.720 --> 00:58:52.800
The ripple effect of suicide

851
00:58:54.360 --> 00:59:01.760
is huge. Johnny suicided. I came very close. Justin, his little brother,

852
00:59:01.760 --> 00:59:03.140
completed suicide. And

853
00:59:04.180 --> 00:59:05.540
the effects of

854
00:59:07.140 --> 00:59:11.080
Johnny and Justin are just huge, the ripple effect,

855
00:59:12.220 --> 00:59:12.680
and

856
00:59:14.700 --> 00:59:23.420
it's a real mindfuck, 'cause you questioned everything you ever said,

857
00:59:23.420 --> 00:59:25.860
everything you ever did, and

858
00:59:28.020 --> 00:59:31.560
you wonder if something you said or did could have changed something,

859
00:59:31.560 --> 00:59:36.800
or you could have done more. And I'm not the only one being

860
00:59:36.800 --> 00:59:38.680
the mom. I know their friends

861
00:59:40.040 --> 00:59:40.620
think that.

862
00:59:42.600 --> 00:59:48.400
I know it's just... It's painful.

863
00:59:49.780 --> 00:59:54.500
This is a memorial wall that I started in 2013.

864
00:59:55.720 --> 00:59:59.960
When you put a face and an age

865
01:00:02.260 --> 01:00:07.080
to... And realize that this person died of suicide, that all of these

866
01:00:07.080 --> 01:00:11.520
people died of suicide, it's just, it's a very heart wrenching and very

867
01:00:11.520 --> 01:00:12.260
impactful.

868
01:00:13.280 --> 01:00:19.800
It's now well over 80 feet long and I have almost 400 photos

869
01:00:19.800 --> 01:00:31.160
on it. We have overdoses, gunshot, hanging, poison, just about every method

870
01:00:31.180 --> 01:00:32.720
of suicide

871
01:00:34.040 --> 01:00:35.480
has been done on this wall.

872
01:00:37.800 --> 01:00:40.560
And it's so sad that they think that that's the answer,

873
01:00:43.300 --> 01:00:44.420
it's not the answer.

874
01:00:49.120 --> 01:00:49.260
Kit,

875
01:00:50.600 --> 01:00:53.540
I really wanna let kids know that illegal drugs are bad news.

876
01:00:53.540 --> 01:00:57.160
Yes, David. It's true. Over one hundred thousand teenagers were admitted

877
01:00:57.160 --> 01:01:00.480
into hospitals last year, because of drugs. Yeah, but I'm talking about

878
01:01:00.480 --> 01:01:03.780
kids' futures. Did you know that marijuana can affect a person's physical

879
01:01:03.780 --> 01:01:07.900
and sexual growth? Yes, that's quite accurate. In a laboratory test,

880
01:01:07.920 --> 01:01:11.880
female animals treated with the active component in marijuana, experienced

881
01:01:11.940 --> 01:01:16.080
a 44% death rate among their offspring. This is much more important than

882
01:01:16.080 --> 01:01:19.560
facts and figures. What kids should know is that marijuana has got more

883
01:01:19.560 --> 01:01:23.140
cancer causing agents than tobacco and a lot of young kids use drugs

884
01:01:23.140 --> 01:01:26.800
on a daily basis. One of the things that people talk about is,

885
01:01:27.220 --> 01:01:30.240
there needs to be more research into cannabis, but what people don't realize

886
01:01:30.240 --> 01:01:33.980
is that there's already been thousands and thousands of reputable studies

887
01:01:33.980 --> 01:01:37.680
done around this plant. I think probably the most predominant thing happened

888
01:01:37.680 --> 01:01:41.120
last year when the National Academy of Science came out with a statement

889
01:01:41.120 --> 01:01:45.580
that said, cannabis does have medicinal properties, and one is

890
01:01:46.240 --> 01:01:50.600
treatment... Relief from the treatment of chemotherapy. So it definitely

891
01:01:50.600 --> 01:01:54.020
improves somebody's quality of life that's going through chemotherapy. One

892
01:01:54.050 --> 01:01:56.840
of the other thing that was interesting... They found out though is that

893
01:01:57.120 --> 01:02:01.320
smoking cannabis does not cause cancer. So this has been a myth that's been

894
01:02:01.320 --> 01:02:05.340
out there for a long time, that's fluctuated through. So smoking any type

895
01:02:05.340 --> 01:02:07.920
of cannabis does not cause any type of lung cancer, there's no...

896
01:02:08.140 --> 01:02:11.060
There's no substantial research showing that that actually occurs.

897
01:02:15.260 --> 01:02:21.320
I never expected to be diagnosed with cancer at 46, but I should

898
01:02:21.320 --> 01:02:26.520
have known. I mean I had a... My father had three different cancers

899
01:02:26.520 --> 01:02:30.980
when he died. I was his primary caregiver for the last two years

900
01:02:30.980 --> 01:02:35.880
of his life and I saw him endure all the awful effects of

901
01:02:35.900 --> 01:02:39.700
chemo and I just knew for me that I didn't want that.

902
01:02:40.760 --> 01:02:46.760
This says that the biopsy showed a malignancy in the left breast. This

903
01:02:46.760 --> 01:02:51.653
is a common cancer in the breast of women and it's usually easy

904
01:02:51.744 --> 01:02:55.682
to treat, especially that since we caught it early, it should be pretty

905
01:02:55.749 --> 01:03:00.280
manageable. I would say, so I was diagnosed in January of 2017,

906
01:03:02.680 --> 01:03:07.560
the biopsy showed I had a highly invasive intraductal carcinoma that was

907
01:03:08.260 --> 01:03:12.720
a little bit between stage I and stage II. So early stage,

908
01:03:13.160 --> 01:03:15.880
very hopeful that there would be

909
01:03:16.900 --> 01:03:18.540
remission eventually.

910
01:03:19.700 --> 01:03:21.720
I did all the standard

911
01:03:23.020 --> 01:03:29.980
surgery, radiation, but I refused chemo in order to instead opt for this

912
01:03:31.120 --> 01:03:36.360
cannabis oil and trying to prevent recurrence with this. Cannabis does have

913
01:03:36.360 --> 01:03:40.640
some anti cancer properties, but we don't really know how to harness that

914
01:03:40.640 --> 01:03:46.320
yet, we don't know what tumor cell lines are responsive to what cannabinoids

915
01:03:46.320 --> 01:03:49.260
and things like that. So in my case, the only thing I can

916
01:03:49.260 --> 01:03:54.340
do is just try to take this sort of shotgun approach.

917
01:03:55.060 --> 01:04:01.780
So this is really a hyper potent form of cannabinoids, they've been extracted

918
01:04:01.880 --> 01:04:02.180
and

919
01:04:03.440 --> 01:04:06.760
put into this oil now and you can see here, this is full

920
01:04:06.760 --> 01:04:13.400
of THC, CBD and other terpenes, and cannabinoids. So all we do is

921
01:04:13.720 --> 01:04:19.040
we take the oil we squeeze out a little bit and we put

922
01:04:19.040 --> 01:04:23.680
it right on the capsule there. But you can see this is a

923
01:04:23.680 --> 01:04:30.040
very imprecise way of dosing of... We really don't know if this is

924
01:04:30.040 --> 01:04:34.420
gonna work or not. We're all looking for something that gives us hope.

925
01:04:36.780 --> 01:04:38.000
Hello? Hey Mom.

926
01:04:39.180 --> 01:04:46.340
So what's happening? The both mammogram and breast ultrasound were negative.

927
01:04:47.170 --> 01:04:53.190
Oh, I was so worried, with all kinds of instruction, I thought maybe you

928
01:04:53.236 --> 01:04:54.840
had a biopsy. I know, no.

929
01:04:56.580 --> 01:05:02.720
Luckily, everything went great, and now this is almost two years,

930
01:05:02.720 --> 01:05:12.760
right? Since the... Yeah, what about the medicine that you're... How can

931
01:05:12.760 --> 01:05:16.960
you get this medicine anymore? Oh the marijuana? Yeah, I don't know,

932
01:05:16.960 --> 01:05:20.180
I have to figure it out. It's always a challenge trying

933
01:05:20.820 --> 01:05:25.060
to find new supply. And then, he doesn't do it anymore. I know, we'll

934
01:05:25.060 --> 01:05:27.620
figure that out. But anyway, I just wanna let you know,

935
01:05:27.620 --> 01:05:29.900
mom, I'm gonna wrap up, but I'll give you a call later,

936
01:05:29.900 --> 01:05:36.410
okay? Okay, love you. Love you. Oh, Sue? Oh yeah. Sue? Yes? I'm gonna ask

937
01:05:36.581 --> 01:05:44.980
Sam to bring your milk, and I have also soup. But I

938
01:05:45.560 --> 01:05:50.020
the pot, I need the pot, so I put it in the deep dish. Okay, that's

939
01:05:50.139 --> 01:05:53.969
great, Mom, thank you so much. Okay, love you. Love you.

940
01:05:54.045 --> 01:05:54.275
Bye,

941
01:05:55.470 --> 01:05:56.545
Ma. so.

942
01:05:58.340 --> 01:06:01.710
So as a physician, I weighed the options,

943
01:06:02.920 --> 01:06:06.960
there's a whole bunch of different treatments you can do with this early

944
01:06:06.960 --> 01:06:12.620
stage breast cancer. It's a personal decision, each patient is gonna handle

945
01:06:12.620 --> 01:06:18.220
this differently. I think I had the chance because it was early stage,

946
01:06:18.220 --> 01:06:24.380
that I could try this approach with using a high dose cannabis to

947
01:06:24.560 --> 01:06:28.440
try to prevent recurrence, and it wasn't just going in blindly,

948
01:06:28.440 --> 01:06:33.620
I have some colleagues that have produced some data that shows that they

949
01:06:33.620 --> 01:06:39.380
took breast tumor cells in a petri dish and introduced a synthetic cannabinoid

950
01:06:39.380 --> 01:06:43.920
and found a dramatic reduction in the density of the breast tumor cells.

951
01:06:43.920 --> 01:06:48.880
And I look at that data, this is legitimate data published in peer

952
01:06:48.880 --> 01:06:53.600
reviewed medical journals and... And I made a personal choice that I was

953
01:06:53.600 --> 01:06:56.540
gonna go this route. I can still always

954
01:06:57.160 --> 01:07:01.020
go with full mastectomy and chemo and all those things later,

955
01:07:01.020 --> 01:07:04.990
but right now, I just chose to do a simple lumpectomy,

956
01:07:05.000 --> 01:07:11.060
radiation, and then try this and see if I can flood my receptors

957
01:07:11.060 --> 01:07:15.580
and capitalize on whatever anti cancer properties that this material has.

958
01:07:18.760 --> 01:07:21.100
Usually when I'm sitting on panels, and they say, "Well, how long before

959
01:07:21.100 --> 01:07:23.880
it'll be federally legal?" I'm saying two years.

960
01:07:24.520 --> 01:07:29.060
Some of the challenges with getting there would be the United Nations and

961
01:07:29.060 --> 01:07:32.380
some of the treaty issues. Once though we see how Canada does,

962
01:07:32.380 --> 01:07:35.880
especially with the UN's posture and treatment of Canada, with regards to

963
01:07:35.880 --> 01:07:39.510
their recreational space, then we'll see the United States government move

964
01:07:39.559 --> 01:07:44.880
in that direction. So the legalities around cannabis north of the American

965
01:07:44.880 --> 01:07:50.160
border are quite different than in the States. And I have a heavy

966
01:07:50.160 --> 01:07:53.280
heart, and a sad place in my heart for

967
01:07:54.160 --> 01:07:58.600
my southern brothers and sisters. Hence, creating a charity with a global

968
01:07:58.600 --> 01:08:01.320
focus to try to change some of this stuff.

969
01:08:02.420 --> 01:08:05.600
You're supposed to have a high GAFF, it's a high give a fuck

970
01:08:05.600 --> 01:08:06.120
factor.

971
01:08:07.300 --> 01:08:10.980
I've turned the acronym into the Global Alliance Foundation Fund.

972
01:08:16.740 --> 01:08:20.220
Its principal will never be touched, and this fund will last forever,

973
01:08:20.220 --> 01:08:23.540
and in perpetuity the interest will be spent to bridge the gap in

974
01:08:23.540 --> 01:08:25.780
care on a global effort

975
01:08:28.180 --> 01:08:29.480
for veterans everywhere.

976
01:08:32.140 --> 01:08:37.480
The fact that people have had to relocate as kinda refugees for access

977
01:08:37.480 --> 01:08:41.170
to the medicine, it's ridiculous in a country that's known for its freedoms,

978
01:08:41.180 --> 01:08:46.820
such as America. The over prescription of these very powerful drugs is something

979
01:08:46.820 --> 01:08:49.040
that we really need to pay more attention to,

980
01:08:49.760 --> 01:08:54.580
and we need to educate ourselves. Cannabis has never killed anybody,

981
01:08:54.640 --> 01:08:58.820
you cannot overdose from it. It has the addiction rate of coffee.

982
01:08:59.120 --> 01:09:03.180
So we need academia to embrace it, we need our politicians to embrace

983
01:09:03.180 --> 01:09:07.500
it, we need our physician community to embrace it, so that the patients

984
01:09:07.820 --> 01:09:11.560
win at the end of the day. I so wish that my son

985
01:09:11.560 --> 01:09:15.340
would have smoked pot, but my son would not do anything that would

986
01:09:15.340 --> 01:09:18.700
be illegal. I think it's silly that you've got

987
01:09:19.740 --> 01:09:20.400
a plant,

988
01:09:21.640 --> 01:09:25.120
something that does these amazing things that they've now seen. You've got

989
01:09:25.120 --> 01:09:28.880
nine states that have it legal, you've got 33 states, give or take,

990
01:09:28.880 --> 01:09:31.580
that have a medical program. And so at the end of the day,

991
01:09:31.580 --> 01:09:33.340
they're not putting this genie back in the bottle.

992
01:09:37.860 --> 01:09:42.370
Something so preventable, my son didn't wanna

993
01:11:06.480 --> 01:11:07.980
die.