Original subtitles

[piano music]

[birds chirping]

[Pete] As long as I can remember,

I've always had a thirst for life.

What makes us vibrant and healthy?

I've scoured the planet for the best ingredients.

Cooked for over a million.

And tested all the supposed magic pills,

only to find empty promises.

But I've heard tall tales of this wonder plant.

[Nora] We co-evolved with this plant.

We know that it has been a part

of our medicinal landscape

for probably tens of thousands of years.

Plants have always been a source of medicine.

And they continue somewhat indirectly to be that way.

I honestly think that cannabis

is here for us to heal.

And I think generations before we were using it.

[Pete] It feeds people, it clothes them.

heals them and even provides shelter.

It's world-transforming.

The medicine itself, the plant itself

has all of these uses that can heal the world.

It is such a fascinating medicine

that we're only starting to scrape the surface of.

[Pete] It inspires religions and opens minds.

I was educated by my patients

to teach me what cannabis could do.

[Pete] It evokes controversy and debate.

There is something really, really wrong

with a system where there is a product sitting there

that can save people's lives.

And the government just won't let you have them.

It seems crazy

that we allow people to consume tobacco

and we know some of the really significant

harms of alcohol in our community.

And yet, we say that we can't ban,

we can't stop adults from making those decisions.

But we do say this for cannabis.

[Pete] It is the source

of a love-hate relationship with humanity.

For longer than any other cultivated crop.

I'm not one to say that this plant is a cure all

and it's going to cure every single disease out there

and it's going to work for every single person.

But if it helps even put your symptoms at bay,

that's something huge for a lot of people.

We have patients. .

that are off their meds that they were on

for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

It has been known for probably four thousand years

that cannabis treats epilepsy.

And I've been a family doctor for 47 years.

I've never seen a medicine work so effectively

and is so safe.

And how do we use it to wake up?

How do we use it to know ourselves better?

This isn't just about profit,

but this is about healing the community.

The entire industry needs a reeducation.

But the entire world also needs a reeducation on cannabis

because for 80 years, we have not been allowed

to study the plant.

[Pete] Can one plant

possibly live up to all this hype?

If so, it just might be

the most miraculous plant on the planet.

I know for a fact that

I would not be alive without cannabis.

[calming music]

[ocean roaring]

[Pete] So I set off across the globe

to meet the leading experts

in health, medicine and cannabis.

[traffic noise]

[David] It's been a medicine for more than 4000 years.

And only was not a medicine

from about 1942 to 1996.

I mean, if we go back to the first

Materia Medica ever written,

according to Chinese oral tradition,

that's the Ping Chao Cheng,

which was allegedly written in 2637 B. C.

And cannabis was in the Ayurvedic Materia Medica,

around 1100 B. C.

And it was in the United States Pharmacopeia

from the 1850s until 1942.

And then until quite recently,

all of our pharmacopeia has been derived from nature

for pretty much as long as we have walked the planet.

And there has been this castigation

of anything derived from nature

is coming from alternative medicine,

holistic medicine, integrative medicine.

And what do they know?

Unfortunately, now with medical marijuana,

oddly enough, that's what opened the door.

Hi, Pete, welcome to my place.

This is our clinic.

Come on in and let me show you the place.

[Pete] So talk to me about cannabinoid medicine.

What does that mean?

What does it mean? To me, it means life.

And they frickin forgot to teach it to me.

I'm a little perturbed.

And I've gone through so many years of education

and I have been learning about

the endocannabinoid system on my own

for about ten years.

And only about 15 percent of medical schools

even teach it now.

So this is very, very important to me

that we learn about a respiratory system,

a cardiac system, an endocrine system.

And yet, a system that's 600 million years old,

we weren't taught about it.

[Dr. Teh] We've evolved with this plant.

For human history, the plant's been here with us.

And whether or not we've changed because of the plant

or the plant changed because of us, that doesn't matter.

But we interact together.

So how is it intelligent?

It works on different areas of our body. .

through various mechanisms.

But the same way that our gut talks to our brain

and tells us what it needs to absorb and send to our body

and the other way around, what the brain needs,

it tells that little bacteria in your gut.

I believe that the plant

has a similar communication with us.

[Nora] It actually is the system

that regulates everything else.

It regulates hormones, neurotransmitters,

immune function, cytokine production, everything.

And as we get older, the. .

That endocannabinoid system can become,

you know, can malfunction.

It can become dysfunctional.

It can be dysfunctional in younger people, too.

And that's where cannabis can come into play

because it has such a plethora of cannabinoids,

fighter phytocannabinoids,

that mesh beautifully

with the human endocannabinoid system.

So my mission is to change the stigma

regarding cannabis.

And for the world

to know about the endocannabinoid system.

And I'm choosing to do it through education.

[narrator] Cannabis is a plant that belongs

to the family of flowering trees called Cannabaceae.

Taking less than one year to grow into full maturity.

The entire plant provides food from the seeds.

Clothing from the fiber, brick from the stalks.

The roots remediate the Earth,

bringing back nutrients to the soil.

The flowers provide medicine and much more.

[Pete] So just how important are the contents in cannabis?

[Ethan] Years ago, I thought, what would it look like

if someone had deficient endocannabinoids?

Unnatural chemicals in the brain

that look like THC.

And it occurred to me that

a number of disorders would fit this description.

Being migraine headaches,

irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia.

And these have a lot in common.

We know. . a study was done in Italy some years ago,

where they measured anandamide

an endogenous cannabinoid that is similar to THC.

They measured that in the cerebrospinal fluid

that surrounds the spinal cord in the brain

and found that there was an extreme lowering

of those endocannabinoid levels

as compared to people who didn't have migraine.

So this was a demonstration of what we call

Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency.

We know this can gradually improve

with aerobic activity, with a good diet.

But also with cannabis.

And one of the things that

the Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency disorders

have in common is that

they seem to be well treated with cannabis.

Whereas most other drugs,

including the approved ones,

work very poorly in these conditions.

[Pete] And how would you define medicine?

Medicine is very, very difficult I think to define.

A drug has many different definitions.

A drug is something that you use to treat disease with.

A drug may be something that affects your. . your physiology.

And a medicine is something

that is meant to make you feel better.

[Pete] Since most medicines today

don't appear in plant form,

I wonder how cannabis will hold up

against designer pharmaceuticals.

[Morgan] I just started getting a lot of pain

out of nowhere in my. . in my stomach when I ate.

I was screaming in pain and my mom just thought,

"I'm just going to take her to the children's hospital,"

which she did.

And it was there that I was finally diagnosed

with Crohn's disease.

But I think there is a lot of

misinformation about this plant.

And there's so many people out there that still don't know

and still have that prejudice against it.

So I just want to tell my story

because it's pretty. . pretty miraculous.

Crohn's is an autoimmune disease.

It affects your entire body.

They had me on. .

medication.

And they put me on steroids.

Which is a lot of the time,

the number one thing that they put people on

to get the flare under control.

But it didn't work for me

and I had a hemorrhage in hospital.

And they took me in for emergency surgery

and removed 20 centimeters of my small intestine.

[Michael] Ben was out on a training ride

after having done the Sydney to Wollongong cycle race.

Triathlon fit at that point in time,

ready to take on the world

and then felt a very sharp stabbing pain

on the right hand side of his spine.

I thought I'd just pulled a muscle to be honest.

I tried to stretch it out,

but it ended up locking,

as if there was a knife shoved in my ribs.

I then had to ride another 600 meters, give or take,

before I could actually get into my street.

And when I got off the bike, I was. .

I was just walking like this.

The neighbor had seen me, came running over.

He said, "Are you okay?" I'm like, "no,"

I grabbed my bike and ended up collapsing.

The disease is called stiff-person syndrome.

It affects one in a million people.

It's actually been over that,

it's closer to one in 1. 2 million people.

When I have a spasm,

they're quite similar to epilepsy.

But the difference is I'm fully conscious,

can hear everything, feel everything.

I'd seen a lot of medical conditions.

I'd worked in significant. .

neurological conditions.

Think Parkinson's, MS, motor neuron disease,

paraplegia, quadriplegia.

I'd never seen anything remotely like this

and what I did see terrified me.

Both my parents are nurses.

They honestly expected to bury me.

[Michael] What it appears as though,

he's being electrocuted when it's at its worst.

[Ben] We've recorded my BP, 208/190.

Temperature of 41. 5 degrees.

And a pulse of 190 beats per minute.

[Michael] I've recorded Ben's vital statistics,

his blood pressure, temperature and pulse

at levels that would kill most people.

[Pete] The more I looked, the more I found youngsters

with terrible afflictions using pharmaceuticals.

Yet not finding the relief they were after.

Someone with a serious illness,

like a brain tumor and intractable epilepsy,

it turns a family's life on its head.

Like, it. . You don't sleep the same way.

You don't live the same way, you can't do things normally.

Everything in your day has to be. .

worked around.

Is someone going to be with him at all times?

[Lindsay] I was constantly sick,

constantly nauseous, constantly having headaches.

One day I was actually asking my dad to help me out. .

with some resumes when I was young

and I went. .

As I was walking into the room, to ask him, I fell.

Face first into the ground, having a tonic seizure.

[Pete] So that was the first time?

Yeah, that was my first time having anything.

A few days later, I had to get an MRI

and I found out I had a tumor in my brain.

They're given various names: GBM, glioblastoma multiforme,

grade four, high grade,

glioma, malignant glioma.

They're all the same thing. It's brain cancer.

It is the worst of all the cancers.

And no one will dispute that.

It carries almost 100% mortality rate.

And only 5% of patients live

more than five years, which is terrible.

Many other cancers have many other different BSTs,

best standard treatments.

So breast cancer, for example,

the first line treatment, if it doesn't work,

there's second line, there's third line,

there's fourth line, there's twentieth line treatments

for some cancers where the first line treatment fails.

Brain cancer?

first line treatment is BST

and no other treatments thereafter.

[Pete] Lindsay's tumor was causing severe seizures,

leading to even more medications.

[Lana] I remember when he was on very high levels of,

you know, some of the drugs

that they give him for the epilepsy.

I mean, he did get toxic at one point

on one of those drugs.

And it was horrible, wasn't it?

He had terrible headaches and he just. .

-I had like. . -Caused liver damage.

Burning all through my insides.

He'd wake up, yeah.

Like there were some foods

they wouldn't let me eat because of it.

We're conducting a clinical trial

using medicinal marijuana or medicinal cannabis

on glioblastoma.

And because this is such a big disease

and with such a poor prognosis.

Like most of people when they get diagnosed with a GBM,

have anywhere between six months

to eighteen months to live.

So. . and at the moment,

we haven't had anything substantially

to extend that for them.

So there's limited treatment.

[Ethan] Seizures, if you will,

are an electrical abnormality in the brain.

If it spreads to the whole brain,

it produces what's called a convulsion.

Epilepsy is a condition of repetitive seizures.

It has been known for probably 4000 years

that cannabis treats epilepsy.

We've got strong evidence from ancient Assyrians.

The Acadians and Sumerians

saw this reference to cannabis

treating a condition, called Hand of Ghost.

And the experts in these things

tell us that Hand of Ghost. .

meant a seizure that happened at night.

And this has been borne out subsequently

in the Middle East from 1200 years ago.

We have attestations

of cannabis treating convulsions.

[Pete] It turns out glioblastoma

isn't the only cause of intractable epilepsy.

[Kim] I am mother to Aaron, who is now four and a half.

So when I turned 40, I decided to have a child.

He came out perfect.

Great APGAR. Like, nine.

And all the tests were fantastic.

And we had a wonderful first four months.

And then on the 27th of January 2015. .

he suddenly had a seizure that lasted 55 minutes.

I had never seen a seizure before.

And I was on my own

and I thought I was going to lose him.

And he was just limp and not moving.

And I was, like, you know, shocked.

"What's wrong with my son?

Why would he suddenly have a seizure?"

He had. . just had a needle that day.

They asked me if he was epileptic

and I said, "Not that I knew of. "

There was no epilepsy in the family,

there's no history of it.

They observed him for a couple of hours and. .

he was fine but when I brought him home,

he suddenly had another seizure.

And this happened repeatedly

and his seizures went from anywhere

from 45 minutes to an hour and 45.

One time he actually completely stopped breathing

and they had to resuscitate him.

[babbling]

So they put him on all these different

antiepileptic drugs and. .

nothing worked, actually everything made him worse.

[babbling]

And that's what really drugged him out, like,

it stopped the seizures, but it stopped everything.

It stopped his learning, stopped. . his functioning as a,

you know, child, infant, growing.

[Michael] We started out with basic painkillers for Ben

because the doctors didn't understand what was going on.

"So you know what? Let's bomb him out.

What the hell?

He just won't be in pain anymore. "

Then, because of everything that

I'd done previously as a nurse, I said,

"well, we need to look at some anti spasmodics

because his muscles are in spasm,

in constant flux. "

They didn't stop moving.

And I've literally had to massage his lower back.

And at one stage, his buttock.

It locked so badly in spasm that

when I managed to get it to release. .

the muscle almost came off the bone.

To watch that happen is terrifying.

To feel it happen.

I can't even begin to imagine

what Ben was feeling at that time.

But anti-spasmodics, painkillers

and no damn answers.

[Pete] Like most people, I grew up believing that

illness is best treated

with clinically tested medication.

But is there really no avoiding

such mild or severe side effects?

[Dustin] What we've found in our efforts

to synthesize single molecules

that are very similar to things found in plants,

is they have a very singular action in the body

most of the time.

And it's a strong action, which often has

more toxic potential side effects.

[Brigitte] If we go back to the year 1900,

most pharmaceuticals were made from plants.

But there's been this quest to either remove. .

one ingredient, one perceived ingredient

as the active ingredient and turn it into a drug.

[David] And oftentimes we see that

when we target one specific pathway,

there are other things that are not anticipated

that can happen down the line

that would have a negative effect.

[Pete] You're talking about side effects.

Side effects, you know, we try to operate

under the principle of "Above all, do no harm. "

"Primum Non Nocere. "

And yet some of the most common interventions used today

in terms of drugs are in fact associated

with horrendous side effects

that nobody wants to talk about.

[Morgan] They had me on steroids.

So I was on one which was called Humira,

and I had to inject myself with it.

And from that, I got drug induced lupus

and then I couldn't walk and I was in excruciating pain

and I was pretty much crippled.

I pretty much didn't have a quality of life

because I was just so sick all the time

and bedbound and malnourished.

So I was very underweight

and it caused all my hair to fall out in year 12,

which I was so embarrassed about.

And I had no idea and I went to my doctor.

And I said, why is this happening?

And he looked in his. .

book of side effects and was like,

"Oh, that is a side effect, I didn't know that. "

There is seriously something wrong in the medical system,

if the doctor doesn't even know

about the side effects of the drug

he's giving out to his patients.

They had nothing else really that they could do for me

and my surgeon was really. . he felt really bad.

But he was like, "we're gonna have to take your colon out. "

And I just was, you know, I had a breakdown

and I just said, I can't do that.

[Pete] What are people to do

when sanctioned medicines

are sometimes causing side effects

nearly as harmful as the ailments

it's made to alleviate?

[David] The problem with being a doctor

is that we are experts in disease,

we're not experts in health.

I think one of the things

that we've dug a hole for ourselves

is looking only at manufactured pharmaceuticals

as having a role in healing.

[Dustin] I graduated medical school

without ever having received a definition of health.

And the best definition I ever had

of healing in medical school was the process

that happens after a surgical incision.

But that's usually not the kind of healing

people are talking about

when they come to the doctor looking for healing.

There are a hundred thousand deaths a year in this country

from overdoses, from pharmaceuticals.

And oftentimes getting off pharmaceuticals

can have their own side effects.

What's wrong with this picture?

I mean, here you've got opioids

that are killing 150 people a day.

That are considered, by classification. .

less dangerous than cannabis.

Which has been shown to not kill anyone.

We have patients. .

that are off their meds that they were on

for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

So it's an exit plant, exit drug.

[Pete] So how do you, as a doctor, know

how to use this medicine?

Because there is CBD oil, THC,

all the different types of cannabinoids and terpenes.

So how do you know, how do you prescribe?

Well, first thing is that we don't prescribe.

We get to only recommend

because cannabis is in schedule one,

along with heroin, LSD and ecstasy.

So doctors don't get to prescribe it.

And I tell them about delivery systems.

We tell them about how you can consume it.

And how it can make you feel.

And how long it can vary from.

[Ethan] When I saw a patient with a given condition,

we discussed all the possibilities

which were conventional synthetic drugs

and natural products.

And I gave them the option.

And many people opted towards natural medicines,

including cannabis.

And to be quite honest, we did as well

or better with those.

Often successfully alleviating symptoms.

And often, most often with many fewer side effects.

[Pete] What does that tell you?

It tells me that nature does it better.

[Ben] Thanks to medicinal cannabis,

I've been able to actually reduce opioids

and take some of those out of my system.

Thanks to a plant.

All the options that I was given. .

there was just. . too many.

And medical cannabis just seemed like a simple idea.

So we went out and we tried it and it actually worked.

[Pete] When you say it worked, what does that mean?

Like, it. . it worked,

it. . it shrinked. .

Well, basically within seven weeks

of him starting the oil in Washington state,

depending on which hospital's report you look at.

One had said 3. 2 centimeters. .

and one had said at 1. 5, 1. 6.

The next MRI showed that

the tumor had reduced down to 0. 8,

like, eight millimeters.

We saw what it was like for him to be without it.

We saw how much his seizures increased.

The next MRI wasn't good.

It showed increased swelling around the tumor.

He cannot stop this treatment. He cannot stop.

[Kim] So when he started the CBD oil. .

he went from having. .

one hundred at least atonic seizure drops,

like, dropping to the ground,

down to about 50 in an entire day.

So there was an amazing reduction.

-[Pete] What did you think? -This is working.

Something's. . something's doing something.

[Pete] So how long has Aaron been on the CBD oil for now?

[Kim] In August, it will be three years.

And he's flourishing.

You know, when I first tried him into childcare

for just up to five hours in one day. .

he couldn't last two hours.

Now he's going four days for the five hours.

So he goes five hours of the day, yeah.

[Pete] And you've got your boy back.

[Kim] I've got my boy back.

And we're an awesome team.

We're buddies, we're mates.

Is that you, is that baby Aaron?

[Dr. Teh] There's a lot of chronic disease

creeping into western society

that's happened since 1940.

Call it a coincidence, I don't know.

But since that time, we haven't had. .

Phyto or plant cannabinoid input

into our bodies regularly as a food

or as a medicine or as a recreation.

And as a result, I believe a lot of. .

disease could be attributed

to a lack of endocannabinoid tone

or endocannabinoid deficiency syndrome.

As Dr. Russo from the States would put it.

[David] I remember seeing a front page article

in High Times that listed a number of medical conditions

that they thought the cannabis was useful for.

And my thought was the same

as some physicians who questioned me.

"No one substance can do all that. "

Well, the fact of the matter is

that cannabis isn't one substance.

It has 512 molecules in it,

113 are cannabinoids.

It has more than 200 terpenes.

Terpenes are what give cannabis its unique odor.

And many of these terpenes have therapeutic value

in their own right.

[Max] You see all those little white, sparkly things?

[Pete] Uh-huh.

-What everyone says, like THC crystals?

-Yeah. -Those are the trichomes.

So what you do is put this up to your eye.

And then bring the cannabis in towards.

-[Pete] Oh, wow. -[Max laughs]

[Max] You see what's going on in there?

You see a million little glowing mushrooms?

-[Pete] Uh-huh. -[Max] These are glands.

Resinous glands, made out of fatty lipids

that the plant grows,

that produces the terpenes.

There's 20,000 types of terpenes in the world

that we're aware of.

These are the chemistry in the flowers.

And then the craziest thing about these smells is,

they have a pharmacology

that dictate where we go with them.

So THC is the engine in the car, right?

And if you've got a HEMI, you've got a lot of THC,

so that's going to push you forward fast.

But if you want to turn the wheel downward

because you just got off of work.

You need sedative terpenes.

Versus if you want to go to a show or do art. .

you want to have stimulating terpene types.

Those are not cannabinoids,

it's not THC that's directing

where this experience is going.

It's the smells.

[Morgan's mom] Terpenes come from the sun and they are. .

they are sex hormones of the female plant,

basically, they are pheromones of cannabis.

[Morgan] My mom found this doctor, Dr. William Courtney.

And he actually healed his wife of. .

I think she had ten different conditions.

She was told she'd never have children,

all this stuff.

And he got on to juicing

and now they have two children together.

And you know, I just saw that

and I was like, we have to give this a go.

By being up here now for three weeks juicing

and I feel better than I have in years.

And all of my symptoms disappeared within three days.

So my bleeding stopped, my pain stopped.

I was living on opiates, which are extremely addictive.

Now, I don't need any of that because of a plant medicine.

[Pete] How could raw plant juice outperform

the top medications Morgan had tried?

[Uma] Understand, that this plant

has over 500 different chemicals.

We've identified over a hundred

and I think 44 different cannabinoids.

The cannabis plant's almost magic in a sense

that it can act on any system.

And it's. . it's intelligent.

It knows what you need to be healed.

Even though you may saturate your body with cannabinoids,

they'll only have effect in the areas

that are required for your healing.

[Morgan] Dr. William Courtney says that. .

most people, when they're on heated cannabis,

such as an oil or something like that,

they start off at maybe ten milligrams,

if they've never had cannabis before.

And that's a. . that's a pretty small dose.

When you have raw cannabis,

such as juicing or something like that,

they have no psychoactive effect.

So you can have thousands of milligrams of cannabinoids

in one hit.

What I personally find remarkable is that

this is the medicine that you're taking.

Yeah.

A living plant, taking the leaves off it

and you are ingesting this. .

in probably the most natural form there is.

Yeah, I think it's something that's a bit hard for people

to wrap their heads around that

a plant can be so healing.

[Pete] Absolutely love the color, it's so vibrant.

[Michael] Even after multiple conversations

and many, many different chats. .

we decided that cannabis oil

was our only significant option at that point.

Not something that we wanted to do.

Ben was as anti-drugs as you could possibly get.

My biggest fear was the fact that it's an illegal drug.

It's the "Devil's Drug. "

You know, I hadn't. . I hadn't done enough research,

to be honest, but everything that. .

has been portrayed out there. .

you know, I didn't want to go near it.

[Michael] It was a blend of cannabis oil and coconut oil.

Now, whole plant cannabis oil.

I need to emphasize this, no matter what happens.

Ben has always had THC

present in his medication.

Five years he's been taking cannabis oil

and yet he has never once been stoned

as a result of taking cannabis oil.

Never once.

It's just remarkable.

I mean, I've had effects from endones

and diazepams. . legally prescribed medication.

Yet something illegal, like cannabis was,

I'd never had any effects from it.

We discussed it at length before we actually went ahead.

In the long run, Ben, as an adult,

turned around and said, "What have I got to lose?"

I just got to the point where I was in that much pain. .

that I needed to try something.

And as soon as I did, well, I haven't looked back.

You know, prior to medicinal cannabis,

I had the best part

of 600 or more spasms, right?

And since I've been using medicinal cannabis,

I've only had three.

Three spasms.

And my average pain level

is between a six and a seven.

And the lowest I've had my pain down to,

was probably about a five, I reported a pain of three.

[Dr. Teh] In response to stress of any kind in our body,

emotional stress, physical stress. .

actual trauma, arthritis,

anything that causes pain or inflammation

or any kind of stress.

Our endocannabinoid system

gets stimulated to start and bring

that stress response, whatever it be,

back into balance, back into homeostasis.

[Marcus] Cannabinoids are the very substances

that are the compounds

that are regulating our biological functions.

From our memory to our appetite,

to how well we sleep

and we can produce these compounds on our own.

Cannabis is a unique plant in the sense

that it produces phytocannabinoids,

meaning they're from plants.

But we ourselves produce endogenously, which means

inside of our own bodies, we produce cannabinoids.

This helps people realize,

"wow, even if I don't use the plant cannabis,

I'm still using compounds like that

to maintain my health and to heal. "

And so that makes it very inviting, very acceptable.

If you look at a sea squirt,

which is a very primitive organism,

it has a cannabinoid receptor that's almost identical

to what we have in our brains and in our bodies.

And that points out to somewhere around

600 million years ago, we had a common ancestor

that developed this cannabinoid system.

[Chris] This is my little shrine to Shiva in cannabis.

Shiva's, you know, goes back to the Stone Age,

really ancient God,

but he's particularly associated with cannabis.

And in this statue,

he's preparing cannabis here, grinding it.

These are balls, bong balls.

They're little, like, round up cannabis,

rolled into balls that he used for preparing bong.

He's got material here for straining and he's drinking

and then he's smoking a chillum here.

Islamic stuff, I've always been a real digger

of the whole Islamic scene

with cannabis Dervishes, and Sufis.

They were using cannabis for centuries.

You know, going back to the early medieval period,

wrote about it, wonderful poems, you know.

One Sufi saying is "God has granted you

the privilege of knowing the secret of these leaves.

Thus, when you eat it, your miseries will disappear

and your exalted mind will become polished. "

Same with these pictures.

We got Ganesh grinding the bong,

which is the Indian name for the cannabis beverage.

And she was drinking it, you know,

these serpents giving it a tester

before he partakes of it, you know.

And here he is again with his wife preparing cannabis.

This is a group of Indian Sadhus

preparing a fire ritual, smoking chillum

It was from the 1920s.

And this is like a marble statue

of a Sadhu smoking a chillum.

We got another Sadhu here.

He has a trophy in his arm by holding it up continuously

as an act of will as part of his yoga practices.

[calming music]

[Dee] A lot of historians agree

that ancient yoga began with cannabis use.

And then I also tell my students,

even if that history wasn't there,

if it works for you, that's all you need, right,

your own subjective experience.

So it's cannabis-enhanced yoga.

And it's specifically a really slow form of yoga

that's for all levels.

And if I have my way, organic cannabis.

We have the color

-of CBD isolate here. -[woman] Oh, nice.

We also have some solventless. .

rosin here as well, if you'd like to indulge too.

But as I always say, a little dab will do you.

[Dee] I was actually the type of person

that cannabis didn't work well for.

It made me quite agitated and paranoid.

And so I tried it again it my late twenties

and it was just at the right dose

and immediately I wanted to get on my mat and do yoga

because it immediately got me, like, feeling my body.

-Oh, that's nice, -It's nice, yeah, that's good.

[calming flute music]

[Dee] A big part, I think, for people to feel their body

is to actually enjoy the feeling.

So if there's a lot of pain,

it's hard to get motivated

to get on the floor to do yoga.

[flute music]

And the more I experience it

and help others into, you know,

that altered state that yoga brings,

the more I realize this is a sacrament.

You kind of lose yourself in, you know, in the yoga.

Right, it doesn't matter if you can touch your toes.

All of the things that we might bring

to a conventional yoga class.

[woman] It might take me in a regular class

where it's really to really unwind and let go.

But the cannabis helps me just drop

into that deep space inside of me.

[Dee] It's really cool that it's both a spiritual substance

and a recreational substance.

And then somewhere in the middle,

it's also a medical substance.

So cannabis wears a lot of hats.

[flute music]

[Pete] Why do cannabinoids and exercise

pair so nicely together?

[Donald] Lately, there's more and more evidence of things

that I've thought for 22 years that the runner's high,

which we attributed to endorphins,

is really from endocannabinoids.

And. . you know, it's to make us feel good.

[Dustin] And when I was in medical school,

I went to an osteopathic conference

and a doctor named John McPartland.

He was presenting a session basically about

how giving someone an osteopathic treatment

would about double their levels of endocannabinoids.

And so I was like, oh, now I understand at least

part of why it feels so good to get up off the table

after a body work treatment.

And now we know that exercise and singing and you know,

all sorts of other things that are healthy

and make us feel good are working,

at least in part by augmenting this endocannabinoid system.

[Chris] My art, the purpose of my art

is to heal myself, to express myself.

And you bring something that's never been seen before.

So in that way, you kind of, like, accessing your God self,

it's like, I can make something that's never been seen before.

And how beautiful is that?

But if on top of that, I can talk to my viewers

and bring some kind of reflection that helps them

a little bit closer to their path towards God consciousness

or their higher self, then that's an extra blessing.

And a great service that I can do

as a human in this time.

[Pete] Can you talk to me about the cannabis plant itself

and your perception of it?

I started smoking at 18 years old,

which I appreciate because I feel like, I had, like,

a big chunk of my life not smoking.

Developing my own personality.

And then at 18, 19, I started smoking weed.

It kind of, like, gives you a different point of view.

So it kind of makes you, like, think things differently.

And it's a healthy thing

to see things from different perspectives.

My problem is I've got a little bit

of an addictive personality.

So like, if I like something,

I want more of it and more and more and more.

And then you just. .

I fall into, like, a cycle where. .

I go up and then as soon as I'm going down,

a little bit under the normal consciousness,

I want to go back up. You know?

I don't want to go down at all.

[Pete] So far, this plant seems incredibly useful

for healing and feeling good.

But what about all those risks

many of us have heard so much about when we were kids.

[police siren]

[female reporter] Armed with a search warrant,

federal drug agents break the lock off this fence

and swarm this home in South Dade.

Drug enforcement officers are looking for illegal drugs.

[male reporter] According to a new survey,

if you're a kid looking for drugs,

you don't have to go any further than your school.

Schools are candy stores of dangerous substances.

Alcohol, cigarettes,

drugs, like heroin, cocaine, acid and marijuana.

[David] We live in a culture in our country. .

we're derived from Puritans

and we have a Judeo-Christian culture

and we are fearful of euphoria.

And we live in this culture that thinks

being high is bad or wrong.

Because some people are just. .

They come in and go, "Dr. Uma,

I don't want to smoke it and I don't want to be high. "

Okay, I appreciate you for saying that.

[Dr. Ivker] I've seen over

almost 8300 patients

and almost all of them

have been using medical marijuana

to relieve their pain.

One of the first things they tell me

when they come in,

"I don't want to get high. "

And they're pretty adamant about it.

[Pete] The big question is, is there any reason

to be cautious around cannabis use?

There's real risks from cannabis.

It happens to be a really non-toxic drug

you can't overdose on.

But you can absolutely have a mental addiction to this.

There are small amounts of physical addiction to cannabis.

To deny this is to put other people at risk.

I feel that the cannabis entity is like

a female loving in a way,

it gives you a nice buzz in the belly.

But it's very sticky, you know,

like the buds sticky to your fingers

and then you smoke it and your mind sticks to things,

like, oh, look at that thing and just look at it forever.

And then it kind of sticks to me in my life.

You know, if I smoke more than two or three days,

it just wants to be with me all the time.

It's like, okay, like, we're. . we're homies now.

So it just sticks to me

and it's really hard for me to remove it.

I don't think I'm at my potential

when I'm stoned all day long.

So I had to consciously stop smoking weed.

Even though I'm an artist,

was part of the psychedelic community,

where everyone is smoking weed around me,

where all my clients either, like,

are part of that industry.

And my fanbase all smoke weed

and I feel like I'm letting them down.

But I just got to be honest to myself and be like,

"you know what, this is not so good for me anymore. "

So I'd rather just not smoke at all these days

so I can not have to depend on anything.

[Dustin] One of the biggest risks of using cannabis

as a medicine is that it works so well.

And that means that it could cover up symptoms

that one's body is trying to use as a communication

to say, "we need to change the way we're living. "

Right.

And so, you know, for example,

maybe someone has chronic nausea,

waking up vomiting in the morning.

They find that by having a couple of puffs of cannabis,

suddenly that symptom goes away.

Do they have an ulcer, do they have stomach cancer?

Do they have something wrong with their diet

that their stomach is resisting, right?

And if. . and if they were to use cannabis

for that purpose for a long period of time,

would that underlying condition get worse?

Probably, yes, not always.

Cannabis may correct. . help correct the physiology

and change the relationship with whatever it was

in their life that was causing the problem.

But often it can be used as a crutch.

It's especially younger males, for some reason,

tend to become so wedded to their use of the plant

that they become cut off from life to a large degree.

It's like you have a little man-cave,

you know, kind of metaphorically speaking

and you're hiding out in it

and it's this cozy place, you know?

Me and my cannabis.

And they prioritize it over relationships

to the rest of life.

So that's sort of the issue with cannabis.

It's very seductive that way, although. .

that's almost not fair.

She's not doing that.

it's we're allowing ourselves

to be seduced by her pleasures as it were.

[Jeffrey] I'm treating families with. .

elderly people or children with mental disorders

or mood disorders or autism.

And I use THC cannabis

as a tool to change people's minds.

If they're not used to it,

when you add a little THC,

you get to think differently.

And that's. . that's a real important tool in medicine

is to have people change their mind

and think differently about things.

At this point of time, I am not smoking weed.

Once in a while, I'll partake

and then I actually get really paranoid and I'm like,

"okay, weed is way too strong for me these days"

and it's just not enjoyable.

So it's almost like, I feel like

my body has a self-defense mechanism.

Where it's like, if I don't scare you at the first shot,

you're going to get back into this

and you're going to go, like, deep into the. . the cloud.

Once again, I'm not at my potential

and I don't enjoy that.

I want to be, like, the best me

and the best of me is like me right now,

thinking clearly and saying what I want to say

without any mud in between.

Now, I often think of cannabis as a teacher because

for the people that are using it as a crutch for too long,

it often will suddenly change the way it affects them.

And they'll say, "for years I've used cannabis

and it's always had this benefit on me.

Now, every time I use it, I get this side effect. "

It's usually anxiety or paranoia,

but sometimes it actually starts making the pain worse

or starts making the nausea worse.

And this is typically a sign that they've been relying

a little too much on this medicine.

That seems like a panacea, right?

That's. . that's how it feels.

It helps with so many different conditions.

-[Pete] Are you skeptical? -Yes.

-Healthy skepti. . skepticism? -Yes.

What are you skeptical about?

For me, primarily is whether or not this would. .

A, work on keeping the cancer and the tumor small,

which is what the oral chemo has been able to do so far.

And the other thing is just the side effects,

the THC in particular, the different. .

edibles that we've tried before the THC.

I didn't like the effect of those

and then concerned about

whether that would allow me to continue to work

if I went that route.

[David] So basically, how do we go about it?

We start low and we titrate up.

So when you're talking about you don't want to be high,

I'll make you a promise that you'll never feel too high.

And then you decide on how much you want to push that.

I often say to my patients

the regards of a psychoactive effect.

So 99% of patients are cannabis naïve

or never seen, touched cannabis before.

So it's important to explain to them

everything that's going to happen.

It's not like you're going to see

pink elephants floating around.

It's more like, you might say,

the trees are a little bit greener,

or the sky's a little bit bluer.

Or you just smell that nice flower on the air,

you'll notice things that you don't normally notice.

And anecdotally, from people, from patients,

they enjoy being outside more and. .

and being in nature more.

I'm going to tell you things.

I'm gonna tell you "Don't trust me, look it up for yourself. "

And I've done the research for you.

And when they say just THC. .

I'm saying, "no, you need CBD also. "

They work in synergy with each other.

I've seen it firsthand.

I've seen people that. .

you know, can't walk,

and once they start using this,

you can see the pain go away.

[Pete] What is a dispensary?

[Jeffrey] Dispensary is where we dispense

cannabis and cannabis products.

So there's dozens of different ways

to ingest it into your system.

So we have a medical side,

where you have to get a medical recommendation

from a doctor in order to go in.

And then a recreational side

where it's basically 21 and over.

Flower-wise, there's not much difference.

The flowers are all pretty much the same on both sides.

On the medical side, though,

if you're taking it for medicinal reasons

and you need higher doses,

that's where the medical side comes in.

[Uma] I'm so against this medical and recreational,

I do not like those words at all.

We never say your heart is working medically

or your heart is working recreationally.

But somehow, when it comes to cannabis

that works with the endocannabinoid system,

we're going to segregate.

It's an incredibly hard plant to regulate.

You know, it's not like most "intoxicants,"

where it's just being used recreation.

And there's not a clear line between

where does medicine stop and. . and intoxicant begin.

We're facing an opioid epidemic.

And this, to me, is a solution.

And cannabis was used

in this country, in the United States. .

for opioid addiction, it was used for alcoholism.

It protects your brain cells.

It's safe.

And yet, it's illegal.

[news anchor] Armed narcotics officers

stayed here all night.

The search is on for the suspects.

[Dr. Ivker] It's been a Schedule 1 drug since 1971,

when Richard Nixon. .

had a commission to study cannabis.

And determine where it should be classified.

And they concluded,

it should not be a Schedule 1 drug,

which is what was proposed.

And in fact, they questioned

whether it should be illegal at all.

And he ignored his own commission. .

and classified it as a Schedule 1 drug.

[news anchor] Deputies had to be flown

to the remote ridge line where the pot farm is growing.

[Pete] There is so much controversy

for this one plant that has served humanity for ages

It is actually a deeply unusual plant.

It was originally domesticated in Central Asia

and humans brought it to every corner of the globe.

And in each of those regions,

it has become specialized for a different purpose.

[Max] People in early human history talk about

the importance of the Stone Tool Revolution

and all the things you could make from that.

But equally as important would be the Fiber Revolution.

Hemp fiber made up most of clothing for humans

throughout most of history.

[narrator] Long ago, when these

ancient Grecian temples were new,

hemp was already old in the service of mankind.

[Max] And it especially powered

the earliest navies of the world.

[narrator] This plant had been grown for cordage

and coarse cloth in China and elsewhere in the East.

[Dr. Holmes] It's sort of the dawn of the Seafaring Era.

Maybe 13-1400 A. D.

Sailors would never depart

on a cross-country voyage without hemp seeds on board.

Because if they were stranded on a desert island,

they could regrow their own sails. .

and sail away again.

[Max] The invention of rope meant

that you could domesticate the horse.

And it meant that you could trap and hunt

in a completely different way.

It meant that you could take foods with you.

And it meant, you could also much easily construct houses

of a. . of a better caliber.

[Pete] Not only has hemp allowed humans

to voyage to new lands

and connect with other cultures,

but it might still offer solutions

to very modern problems,

according to leading technology developers.

My name is Richard Evans,

I'm the CEO and founder of Mirreco.

We have a focus on technology, research and development.

I was introduced to hemp about 12 years ago

by a gentleman in England.

He said to me, hemp will change the world.

[Pete] In what way?

The sheer versatility of the plant

to create, you know, in some people's minds,

thousands of products.

You know, Mother Nature's gifted us

with a renewable resource.

We've just successfully grown a hemp crop in 79 days.

So by comparison, typical trees in the southern hemisphere

take in excess of 20 years

to do exactly the same thing.

In 1937, Henry Ford built a hemp car.

He processed hemp fiber into a composite.

What's most exciting is that he managed

to extract the oil to create a hemp-based biofuel

that was essentially a replacement

for petroleum-based products.

So we could be thinking about cars,

furniture, housing, clothing, fuel.

Plastics is something that's another challenge.

You know, that the world faces today,

so hemp plastic, of course.

[Pete] Though some modern problems

aren't as evident or physical in nature.

[fire crackling]

[Daniel] So this is a tepee that we use

for Native American church ceremonies,

the peyote ceremonies.

And I also do ceremonial work with Cannabis sativa.

About five years ago,

when cannabis became legal recreationally here,

we started to experiment with using Cannabis sativa

as a psychedelic, as a plant medicine.

So if you and I were just sitting here smoking the blend

that I make for psychedelic experiences,

you would have. . you would be in a really altered state,

but it might not be considered psychedelic.

It might be more psycholytic in nature, you know,

more therapeutic and exploratory.

Self-awareness, that sort of thing.

But when we put you in the right certain setting,

laying down flat, eye covering, the right music playing,

the guided meditation,

you can have full blown inner visual experiences.

Full somatic experiences,

being able to see inside of your body

and see tension points.

[Pete] Why is it that you do what you do?

So a lot of the people I work with

have been injured in some way in their childhood.

And that trauma can play out through violence, right?

And also not just through negative things,

but lack of potential.

Somebody doesn't live into their potential

because they've been injured in their childhood.

And so how do we create a container

that can support that healing and that unwinding

of the trauma that they experienced?

The war on drugs is a trauma machine, you know?

But this is my form of activism in the world, right?

Is to. . is to teach people not to rely even on me, right?

Not to rely on other therapists,

but to teach people the skill sets

to heal their own trauma.

So the. . the trend is breaking. .

but we still have a long ways to go.

You know, people are still in jail for this medicine.

Something that I do legally. .

very often, you know, with clients

on a weekly basis, multiple times a week.

People are in jail for doing this.

Working with this medicine or seeking healing. .

[man] People who sell drugs ought to be in jail

for a long period of time.

I believe that what we have to do is not only interdict

and educate against, but also to punish.

We don't punish enough.

[Pete] The punishment in some countries

for making cannabis oil

and giving it to the sick for free

can be decades in federal prisons.

Like with Jenny Helen.

My ex-husband had said to me,

"You've got to be careful, Jen.

it's getting too big, too many people know about you. "

I said, "Don't worry, they won't go after me.

Why would they go after me? I'm not selling it. "

I never hurt anybody. Never made one person sick.

I was sitting in my lounge room. .

and four male police officers rock up to my house.

I had racks of cannabis lying out, drying in rooms.

I couldn't hide it, I couldn't stash it.

I couldn't run around and just put it

into a cupboard or something.

It was all there for everyone to see.

So I took a deep breath. . deep breath

and I met them at the door and. . and he had a warrant.

And I said to him,

"So you're going to find cannabis

and you're going to find cannabis oil. "

I said, "It's for people who are sick and dying. "

I said "Anything that you take from here today

could result in somebody's death. "

And I let them in my house.

And they took about 60 grams of full-extract cannabis oil,

which was three different people's cancer treatments,

including someone who was one of my closest friends

with breast cancer.

She passed away within a month.

They also took about two liters

of the coconut oil. .

which was used for kids with epilepsy.

Kids died.

A month ago, I had a judge that wanted to put me in jail.

And basically said it was equivalent of manufacturing ice

and that I deserved to go to jail and I deserve

the full force of the law.

So it all depends on the judge that you get on the day,

which is scary.

Jenny Hallam had actually seen a story

of a documentary that we had put together.

I didn't know Jenny from a bar of soap.

She saw my son's story on his Facebook page,

Roll On Ben Oakley.

And as soon as she'd seen that,

she immediately reached out to help us, uh

offered a supply of medicinal cannabis oil.

A blend of THC, CBD and coconut oil.

And she said, look, I honestly believe

that this is going to help.

It's so good to see you.

[Fiona] I just cannot understand

how we as a compassionate country

could send someone to jail

for being so compassionate

that they are manufacturing a medicine

and giving it away to people

to save their lives.

How on earth can that be against the law?

It's a plant, for goodness sake,

that we are trying to criminalize.

[Lanai] Nobody should go to jail for that.

[Pete] And if she does. .

It's just terrible. .

-[Pete] Lindsay? -It's just ridiculous.

[Pete] Have you met Jenny?

[Lindsay] Yeah, I have met Jenny.

[Pete] Does she seem like a criminal?

No, she's not a criminal.

She's. . she's a wonderful lady.

[Michael] In any other field of human endeavor,

if you save someone's life at risk to yourself,

you're a hero.

Jenny Hallam will always be my hero.

She gave me back my son.

You're talking about a plant

that can be grown just about anywhere,

that can be very, very easily accessed.

What would you do?

What would you do if it was your child?

Would you break the law?

[Morgan] Yes, we were growing illegally

because it is not legal.

It wasn't legal at the time to grow in Australia.

And yes, so my parents were taking a huge risk.

I felt really guilty about it and it caused

a lot of stress on me because I was constantly worried,

are the police going to come?

What's going to happen?

We got a knock at the door and my mom opened it

and it was the local police from my town.

And so they raided the place.

At the time, I was really sick again. .

and you know,

I've never felt fear like that in my entire life.

I just. . I can't even explain

what it felt like to feel like. .

you know, being so sick

and having something that actually worked for me

and then making

me and my family feel like criminals for it.

[Lanai] There's the added stress

put on a family that's already dealing

with illness that they've. .

they've got to wear this extra burden

of having to break a law

to keep their family member or loved one alive.

It's just unfair.

[Dustin] Are we protecting people?

Are we improving public health by keeping cannabis illegal?

In my opinion and in basically

every academic inquiry that's ever looked into this,

the answer is no.

Prohibition does not improve public health,

it does not reduce the frequency

of cannabis use in the youth.

It doesn't protect people.

Prohibition just fills up the jails and clogs up

the judicial system.

So prohibiting it doesn't work, right?

Education works.

[Pete] Prohibition started lifting primarily

when California passed Proposition 215.

Allowing Californians access to medicinal

or medical cannabis.

It was said to be the greatest marijuana achievement

in political history.

Fourteen years later, the next milestone hit

the Rocky Mountain State of Colorado.

The first place to legalize

the recreational use of this controversial plant.

Ron Seigneur was among the first business valuators

to focus on the emerging hemp and cannabis sector.

[Ron] It was passed here by referendum, by the people,

by a wide margin, by a 63% approval margin.

People said, "We believe that cannabis should be legal. "

[Pete] Tell me about the different types

of businesses that you're seeing emerging now

in the cannabis and hemp space.

[Ron] Well, first, it's going through these evolutions

where the small players are getting absorbed

by the larger players.

Location and efficiency is becoming much more important.

A lot of the people that are in the business

are deciding whether they want to be in the retail side,

in the dispensing side, the grow side, cultivation

or the processing side, making edibles.

And you know, the processing and extraction

part of the business.

[Pete] After countless generations of ancestral use,

here we are at the dawn

of its modern commercial future

after being away for decades.

But the big question is where will industry take this plant?

[Dr. Holmes] Plants are always evolving

and changing naturally.

Over millions of years, they've changed,

just as every living organism does.

Once humans get their hands on a plant,

it starts to change very rapidly.

They. . they direct the evolution of the planet.

They start to push it in the direction

that they want it to go in.

And so it becomes a different kind of organism.

[Pete] The Redwood Territory

of Northern California is home to much

of the underground innovation that happened

to cannabis during prohibition.

Contributing to many new genetic varieties.

[Craig] Originally, people came up here

from San Francisco during the back-to-the-land movement.

Haight-Ashbury, late 60s, early 70s.

And settled in these remote hills

where the logging industry had already come through

and decimated the land.

And then cannabis slowly came into it.

[Pete] But Alpenglow family farms

is keeping the health of the Earth and soil in mind.

[Craig] This is a biology driven farm.

We're not putting nutrients

out of a jug onto our soils.

We're trying to bring in the intelligence

of the Earth to feed our plants.

So we're a regenerative farm.

And what that means is

the constant sequestering of carbon.

[Pete] Uh-huh.

[Craig] And one of our goals here

is to build soils.

And in that if you look at the forest,

the forest is one of the most amazing

closed loop systems you could ever acknowledge.

There's no soil trucks, there's no fertilizer trucks

ever going into the forest.

And it just maintains itself.

And that's not how most farms operate these days?

No.

[Pete] Traditional agriculture

of the past few centuries

has led to topsoil erosion

and also led to the infamous Dust Bowl of the early 1900s.

All that happened when folks were just monocropping

and not really caring for the soil like you should.

So what has been the result of monocropping?

-Oh my goodness. -Complete loss of biodiversity.

[Pete] Biodiversity refers to the ways

different species of plants, fungi,

bacteria, insects and animals interact

to keep the land thriving.

Could regenerative farming plant a seed

for the future of commercial agriculture?

[Craig] Three years ago, we were able

to come out of the green closet.

You know, this is our life work.

We've been so proud of this.

My daughters have been going to school

and not being able to share. .

you know, how we live.

[Melanie] Us growing cannabis allowed us to live off the grid

and to be homesteaders.

It's amazing.

It's magical to be a part

of something so real

and something so untouched by humans.

How to be a part of that

and then learning these practices

on how not to become part of the problem.

[Craig] The whole world is looking at us right now

for our cannabis.

So we have a chance to sneak in our farming practices,

showing regenerative farming is the way to move forward.

[Pete] I traveled the coast north to a facility

that buys cannabis from Alpenglow Family Farms

and packages it for consumer purchase.

[Barry] We're about to see a production facility

that processes cannabis.

So this is a legitimate business.

Yes, this is a fully licensed cannabis business

in the state of California.

So over here

is where we process all the pre-rolls.

[Pete] So how does it get

from the farms to this stage

where you're actually rolling it?

Well, we bring them, we bring

the flower down from the farm.

Then we grade the flower to decide

whether or not it's. . it's of high enough quality

to actually be a part of our True Humboldt brand.

If it has pesticides, it cannot be remediated.

We have to destroy the entire crop.

This is an interesting question, then.

So the state makes you destroy it generally,

if it has got pesticides on it because of health concerns.

-[Barry] Correct. -I find this really fascinating

coming from a chef's point of view.

My journey is all about understanding health.

It seems to me that cannabis is actually leading the way in,

as it goes to actually having

stringent laws in place.

So that. .

the plant itself can't have these harmful pesticides

that we know are causing

so many problems to our health.

Yet. . in the supermarkets,

for instance, or the way that food is grown,

which I believe is another form of medicine,

those rules aren't as stringent.

And I wonder if cannabis is actually

going to lead the way here.

We're hoping that it will.

We should be setting

standards as high as the cannabis standards.

What type of cannabis do you use?

Organic, that. .

that's part of my vote and protest.

If I go to a dispensary

to pick up cannabis,

that's my absolute first question.

What do you have that's organic?

And if they say nothing,

which they rarely do, there's always something.

You know, I would just walk out.

And they would lose my business.

And that would be my protest.

Before, like 1930,

we didn't even use the word organic.

Everything was organic.

But after World War I

and then certainly after World War II,

more chemicals were introduced.

And we are all products

of generations

and decades of being brainwashed

into thinking that we need

glyphosate to kill

our garden weeds.

[Pete] Tell us about quality of the actual plant.

How important is that?

Well, at this point, I don't use any medicine

that's not organic.

And I try to find medicine that's grown

with intention and care.

Right now, we're at the top of the hill of Abundance.

That's what we call it.

And it's been so abundant

over the last 10 years for us

in teaching us who we are.

We grow cannabis here.

We grow cannabis like no one else

can grow cannabis.

-It's organic? -Absolutely organic.

It's full of the energy of the Earth.

As you can see in front of us, this is Mabini.

It's a female mountain.

The aboriginals have a lot of energy here.

So as you can imagine,

plants when they're not organic,

they get fed chemicals

all day every day, so they can grow real fast.

And artificial light,

they hold all that stuff in them

and then they put growth hormones

on to make bigger yields

and sell that to smokers and stuff.

And, uh, that builds up

over time.

More and more people are going to have to change

towards organics.

So we want to sort of set

the benchmark of organics, how you do it,

how you think about it,

why this. . The plant is actually here.

What other goodness can be derived from it?

Fresh is best.

All those concepts

that we lose for convenience.

[Pete] While I definitely lean towards organic,

sun grown vegetables.

Are there any benefits to growing cannabis indoors

with a controlled environment?

-I love the smell in here. -It's quite wonderful.

And what's amazing,

is these plants you look at right now,

there is a patient out there

that will be receiving this plant as a medicine.

In this farm, we have mother plants,

those are plants that, if you like,

maintain the self-sufficiency.

We don't need to import product.

We take cuttings from these mother plants.

Ten days they sit in an incubator

which nurtures them and they move

to the next phase, which is called hardening.

In other words, you are now building

the robustness of the plants.

You are getting it ready for flowering.

Flowers is where the oil and the medicine is.

Now for medical cannabis,

for regulated medicine

that must be 100% the same every time,

this plant has to come

from a stable mother plant

that is bred for a medical condition.

With one of our plants,

particular to epilepsy.

You want to take one cutting,

you'll get an identical replication.

You take 3000 plant cuttings,

which you can see right now.

You get an identical footprint.

So when we move to oil extraction,

when we then produce the bottled medicine,

you are working with an exacting. .

It's a fancy word. . But pharmacovigilance,

this standard of quality.

[Pete] Oftentimes, it's not just

the flowers that consumers want.

Cannabis extracts have become a booming business

but how exactly are these businesses extracting

their product from the plant?

So tell me about this facility here

and how much industrial hemp you've got bagged up here.

[Rich] We have about 20 thousand pounds here

of processing material.

So we're going to take that material

and process what we see here

into a fine grade oil,

which will then be processed into a nice distillate,

which will then potentially be processed further

made into manufactured goods.

[Pete] Now this is industrial hemp,

so that means low or no THC.

[Rich] Almost none. Very, very low.

Has this been bred to have those qualities?

Lower THC, higher CBD?

-Absolutely. -Okay.

[Pete] So there's cannabis that has high THC,

which gives you the psychoactive.

And then there's the low THC,

high CBD, which is the hemp,

which is what you're making for the CBD oil?

Correct, this is what we grow for CBD production, not THC.

A lot of people don't want to have

an altered state of mind.

What we want to have is an improved state of mind.

A CO2 machine is a different type of machine

that they would use high pressures of carbon dioxide

to strip the plant material versus ethanol.

-Uh-huh. -There are, you know,

other methods too, you can use butane.

Some people use butane.

There's some methods of using propane.

So the goal is,

in any of these extraction methods,

is to access. .

Strip the plant material of the cannabinoids

and other bio nutrients.

Okay, and that's what this machine does here.

That's correct. So then we take this bio bag.

Stuff it in here.

We're going to run ethanol through here,

and it's going to be at high pressures,

there's going to be two tanks.

It's going to be at about 40 degrees below zero.

So at that lower temperature is actually going to help us

not take off some of the fats

and the sugars that we would not want.

We would have to actually do another process later.

And then after that, we have the crude oil.

Crude oil.

[Pete] But this is. . this is a very intense concentrate

of the hemp plant or cannabis plant.

-Very intense. -So all the medicine's in here.

-It is. -Okay.

This isn't the final stage, is it?

No, it is not.

We fill the mantle

with the crude

and we distill it off

similar to as you would do alcohol.

[Pete] Uh-huh.

So after it comes out of that machine,

this is what we have.

[Rich] We've taken plant material

to crude, crude to distillate.

Now we have distillate.

Distillate, which means?

This is the higher concentrate of crude.

It's a much higher concentrate, almost to an isolated state.

[Pete] So if I am to ingest this. .

[Rich] You're going to feel a lot better.

-But no THC. -Very, very little.

-So CBD, so down the hatch. -Down the hatch.

Well, it's got a really strong, strong flavor, doesn't it?

[Rich] It does.

-So there's one extra step. -There is, let's go

-into the isolute room. -Okay.

In here is where we make isolate.

So isolate means?

Isolated CBD itself.

Nothing else in there but CBD.

We pour pentene in.

We get the temperature up to 30 degrees Celsius.

[Pete] So pentene is an alcohol?

-[Rich] It's a solvent. -[Pete] Okay.

[Rich] You can see it spinning.

It's heating it to the perfect temperature

and mixing it so that it will bond with the pentene.

We take those pentene jars and we put them in freezers.

And the freezing process causes

the pentene to separate everything else

and crystals form on the side.

And the crystals are the CBD. .

-Isolated CBD. -Isolate.

Our vacuum ovens. .

are where we melt that back down.

We're at 250 degrees.

The whole time we're pulling this at 600 pounds vacuum

and that is taking all the solvents out of it

so that all that is left after cooking

and vacuuming is just the isolate.

[Pete] So this is a very important step

to make sure that the end product is pure.

[Rich] Absolutely.

That is isolated CBD.

-So neutral flavor? -Neutral flavor.

So what. . who uses this?

Where does this go to from here?

[Rich] This is for the clientele

that would want THC free.

If you want a THC. . absolutely THC free product

you're going to use isolate.

-Hey, how are you? -[man] Thank you.

What can I get started for you?

I might get one of those CBD lattes, please.

[barista] Eight or 12oz for you?

-[Pete] Uh, 8oz, thank you. -[Barista] Cool.

[Pete] I couldn't help but wonder

if this refining process

would send cannabis

down the same path that wheat,

sugar and even the coca plant went down

where their refined state

no longer resembles the look

and the quality of what nature produced.

[Dr. Holmes] The evolution of cannabis

is just speeding up.

It's accelerating.

For 10,000 years,

we took care of them and you know,

we picked the seeds from the plants that we liked

the best and then save those seeds and replant them and. .

and then over the course of this century,

we started understanding how. . how genes

are carried through generations.

We learned how to read the DNA in plants,

and we could figure out what genes control, what traits.

It's become very powerful.

And the rate of change in. . in all of the major crops

that we work with started to accelerate.

Barley, and corn, and soy,

and rice are all coming out much more frequently,

and we're figuring out how to bend them to our will.

Cannabis went through a different process.

All of that modern breeding that's happened

in this century has never happened to cannabis.

So our job is to apply the tools

that let you do rapid plant breeding

to all of those traits to make the plant really work

for farmers, to make it stronger

and more disease resistant and higher yielding,

but also to make plants that can become targeted medicine.

[Pete] So what are we looking at here?

[Nishan] Well, we call this the Phylos Galaxy,

and, um, each dot

-is a plant, so. . -A cannabis plant?

A cannabis plant that we've sequenced the DNA of.

[Pete] How many have we got listed here?

[Nishan] Oh, there's. . I don't know, three to five thousand

In my lab only, I have 700

different types of cannabis,

different chemovars,

that have a different combination of compounds.

And if you take all the high CBD strains

that we have and you check on epilepsy,

how it affect epilepsy,

you see that even though they have

the same amount of CBD and THC,

its effect totally different.

Sometimes in different mechanism,

a different compound will bind

different receptor with effect.

So we need to understand that cannabis is not one medicine.

[Pete] This enormous variety of cannabis

comes not from nature,

but from underground breeders.

[Dr. Holmes] There's this side effect

to advanced breeding work,

which is that you end up with these elite cultivars

that are much higher yielding

than the original varieties you started with.

But we abandon

the genetic diversity that it came from.

Even though these higher yielding. .

crops are supposed to make

our food security situation much better,

paradoxically, they've made it much worse

because populations are strong when they're diverse.

That's what makes a population. .

robust and powerful.

And the same is true for humans.

[Uma] We need to understand how it's produced,

who are the people producing it?

What is their intention?

Because people that are producing it

just for profit. .

don't care about necessarily the patient.

If we don't protect it,

we will create a poison out of this plant.

[Pete] I've always believed that to truly heal

and to be healthy,

we need to have a mix of modern medicine

and ancient wisdom.

We must consider. .

putting our health care back into our own hands,

or perhaps our backyards.

[Dustin] People often grow thyme and rosemary and oregano,

things that make their foods taste good.

That also have medicinal properties, right?

There's many herbs that people grow, and if they don't,

then they ought to, because

health sovereignty is quite important

if we rely on some system to prevent disease

and take care of our health,

you know, it's unlikely that we're going to get

optimal results because usually the goal of that system

is not the same as the individual's goal.

[Pete] If more people did this?

Oh my goodness, we would start

being able to feed the planet

because that's going to be a real problem

as we move forward if we don't all

start growing what we can

in all of our backyards

to some. . some capacity.

Whether it's one tomato plant and two beans,

but we all need to start planting something

in our backyards.

-[Pete] Even cannabis? -[Craig] Even cannabis.

[Pete] Would you be proud to grow cannabis

here in your garden?

That sounds really crazy, but, um. .

-I. . I would, I would. -I wouldn't. .

-I would grow it for myself. -I wouldn't think about it

as being proud.

I would just think about it as a human right.

This isn't the only way to live,

but this is a possible way to live.

And sometimes it's going to come at a price.

And that meant that we had to be outlaws. .

for a while until the rest of the world caught on that

this is an amazing plant

with amazing potential and possibilities.

And your daughters' relationship with this plant,

what do they think like?

They don't think it's any different than any other thing

that we have growin' in the garden.

[Fiona] So, yes, I can grow Valerian,

I can grow Saint John's wort. .

I can grow a whole range of herbs

that I can use for medicinal purposes.

And yet here's this one plant

that I'm not allowed to grow.

I think saying that someone cannot. .

cannot choose to take that substance

is a human rights issue.

[Dustin] For a person to really heal and change

they have to have some shift in their patterns

of thought and in their patterns of behavior.

Many of my cannabis using patients come back to me

and say things like,

"I was able to see myself from a different perspective,

and that helped me solve some of my challenges.

I was able to step out of my suffering mindset

and start appreciating the beautiful things

that were right around me that I was ignoring before. "

These medicines seem to have their own agenda.

We named our clinic Innate Path for a reason

because, you know, there is innate intelligence

within us guiding us through these places.

The majority of traditional psychotherapy

is something called cognitive behavioral therapy

and in the best of scenarios, which means, you know,

laboratory idealized conditions,

you get an effectiveness rating

of about twenty-two percent with that.

There's so many things I think we distrust about nature.

It's wild, it's. . you know, it's not controllable.

You know, it's. .

just like our emotions aren't controllable,

you know, and it makes sense that any kind

of mental health paradigm that comes out of a society

that's been somewhat divorced from nature involves

a paradigm of control.

One of the attributes of cannabis

is sort of to expand consciousness.

It opens up people to different ideas,

different interests and looking at things

with a different perspective.

Now this all sounds very hippie-dippy,

but when this produces

a tangible improvement in. .

in someone's adjustment to life,

it's really an important thing.

Cannabis is. . has been defined

as a nonspecific amplifier.

Which is a term applied to other psychedelics

and antigens, oftentimes, as well.

So what it does is function as an amplifier of energy,

and it enhances this present moment

in a variety of ways.

I and others consider it an advanced spiritual medicine

because to really understand how to. . you know,

use cannabis to help you awaken

requires some basic understanding

of that's what you're doing, potentially

is you're bringing yourself into this now moment.

[Pete] All along, I've been listening to the experts

tell me about how cannabis heals,

how it feels, it's sacred nature

and long history.

And I've yet to take the plunge

and try it in a new way.

[Daniel] You know, because we work ceremonially,

right, and intentionally put a lot of care in the. .

containers and the image of it,

shows a sense of respect.

Let's just take a smell. .

and notice it.

It's there for you.

Very calming, very peaceful.

It's a blend of about fifteen different strains.

You know, all organic and. .

and so this is what it looks like.

-Uh-huh. -So, we use a mortar

and pestle to grind it.

And I call that making Many Spirits One,

you know, so like every strain

has a different personality and a different use.

So in this good way, I'd like to offer you this pipe

when it turns green,

that's an indication to imbibe.

You know, we start these ceremonies by imbibing

the sacred plant ally into our hearts,

our bodies, our minds and our spirits.

And we give thanks for this plant.

This. . this beautiful, sacred plant medicine. .

Cannabis sativa, for being so available to us for. .

for the purpose of exploration and healing. .

and many blessings on your journey as you explore

this medicine and all its uses.

Many blessings to you too, brother.

-[Daniel] Is it turning green? -She's green.

[Daniel] She's green, all right, so. .

so, just take a pull and it might take a couple,

so we'll do a couple, make sure you're getting

some medicine and then we'll pause

-and see how you're feeling. -Okay.

[Daniel] Without losing touch with the experience,

what do you notice, what's present for you?

Sadness.

-[Daniel] Sadness. -Uh-huh, in here.

[Daniel] In your heart?

What else is there around that,

what do you notice about that sadness?

What was interesting is I felt like

there was sadness around the actual plant itself.

It's like trying to communicate that.

What do you mean by that, sadness around the plant?

Like. . Tell me what you mean by that.

It felt like it was communicating to me that. .

-[Daniel] It's sad. -It's sad,

for the perception and for the. . for the pain.

Yeah.

There's people in jail. .

still for sharing this medicine.

[Daniel] Yeah.

[Dustin] So where do we begin?

Well, we begin by setting

the cannabis criminal prisoners that are still in jail,

wasting their lives by setting them free.

This is something that has to happen that

a lot of people aren't talking about.

And we're trying to come out from that place

where it's just been illegal and has been condemned

as a dangerous drug.

And so we're still getting out

from under that misinformation.

[Jenny] Everything's been moved out.

I'm just sitting here with a lot of furniture.

And tomorrow [indistinct]

[sobbing]

[Michael] Jenny called me when the police

were still in her house

and said "the police have raided me"

She was terrified, she thought

they were going to drag her away in handcuffs

and she was never going to see a family again.

I said to Jenny at the time after the police had left. .

"What do you want to do? You want to sit back?

Do you want to blend into the shadows?

Do you want to wait and see what's going to happen?

Or do you want to do as I think you should do

and you want to attack?"

She said, "We're going for it. "

[Pete] While Jenny Hallam awaits the judge's decision

on whether or not the next two decades of her life

will be spent behind bars. .

other countries are paving the way for the flurry

of new cannabis products to hit the shelves.

[Marcus] I have eaten it, I have worn it,

I have used it medicinally.

I've used it recreationally,

so I really. . I see cannabis as

a sort of quiver that offers, I mean,

50,000 commercial products from hemp.

There's so many things we could do with this cannabis plant.

We could be making homes

that are fire resistant.

We could be making fabric.

Right now, cotton is one of the most

heavily pesticided crops on the face of the Earth,

and cannabis grows easily outdoors

without pesticides.

[Richard] I don't want to really be too strong

with the word extinction, but. .

you know, we are moving in a new direction

on a planetary level.

Hemp draws carbon down very fast,

very successfully and then the application

to convert that carbon

into products that can benefit humanity

has staggering significance.

[Brigitte] I know a lot about a lot of plants,

and I don't know any other plant

that does so many things.

[Richard] Yes, there are doubters and yes,

there will be challenges, but. .

based upon the research that we've done,

I do not see any reason why this will not change the world.

[Nora] I believe it may just be the single most. .

important and beneficial medicinal plant

that we've ever come into contact with as a species.

[Dolph] There's no way our endocannabinoid system

is going to balance itself

because we're so deficient in everything.

So the cannabis plant says,

"I'm a survivor if I have to live my life

in a dingy growing tent with shit nutrients,

well, I will live. "

[Ethan] When a patient is not getting satisfaction

from their treatment with conventional medicine,

you can be sure they're going to be on the search

for something better.

And in so many instances, this leads them to cannabis.

It's not a magic plant.

I think in general, out of all the plants,

it has the most properties,

but it's not a cure-all to everything

because everybody's individual.

If you look at all the botanical

and pharmaceutical medications combined,

it's probably the one that is the most broadly applicable,

effective and safe.

So it is, you know, really high up there

as far as what it can help with,

but it can't help with everything.

It's not a single solution

to all our health care problems.

But it has probably the most amount

of beneficial properties and uses

compared to any other plant.

As someone who was very against it

and to see someone who has actually

had firsthand experience with it,

I would say that medicinal cannabis has not only

saved my life, but it's given me life again.

If I were going to put it on to a bell curve,

there's that small group of patients that. .

it's just not for them.

There's the majority of patients

who are some time in their life,

this is going to be a really valuable medicine for them.

And there's the other end of the bell curve

where I'd say they shouldn't go without it.

They just function a lot better with cannabis.

I know for a fact that

I would not be alive without cannabis.

A hundred percent, I know for a fact that

I would not be here.

[Pete] Where do you think you'd be without this plant

entering your life?

I don't think you'd be here now.

It's my life support.

I don't even think he'd be with us now

if it wasn't for that plant.

Health care providers need to be reminded that

at the end of the day we're all patients.

How do we actually use it to heal?

And how do we use it to wake up?

How do we use it to know ourselves better?

There is a consciousness revolution going on

on this planet that has to happen

and a significant part of it,

a central part of it, is that to discover

that we are our own healers.

What the world needs now is to just be

very open minded and creative about what's going to help us,

what's going to work.

The foundational belief of holistic medicine. .

is that unconditional love. .

is life's most powerful healer,

and the path

to optimal health. .

is through self-love.

And cannabis. .

is a very effective tool. .

for facilitating that process of. .

heightening and expanding

your capacity to love.

I am an optimistic person,

a very optimistic person,

and I do believe that good will win out,

that love will win out,

that when politicians hear more of the personal stories,

when they meet the people,

when they see the. . the joy

that this plant is bringing

to people's lives, that that will win.

Any cannabis is better than no cannabis,

right here right now on this planet.

This plant is magical beyond belief.

I believe in the love tribe.

It's out there, it's getting stronger.

People want to be good, people want to have community,

people want to save the Earth.

People want. . people just want to be happy

and they want their neighbor to be happy.

[Dolph] It is the pinnacle of what we are.

If I'm allowed to spread and go forth like this,

what's happening on our farm,

well I'll show you a better version of cannabis

that you cannot believe is possible.

[Pete] I guess that's just the nature

of this incredible plant.

To send its seeds into

a future that's hopefully better and brighter.

A survivor in a rapidly changing world. .

like us.

I'm still not sure if this is the magic plant.

Or just another miraculous part of Mother Nature.

But I do know this.

Whatever it takes for humans to live and love well

and stick around this beautiful garden long enough

to appreciate it in ever more harmonious ways,

more and more every day. .

now that's the seed I really wish to plant.

[didgeridoo instrumental]

[upbeat guitar music]

♪ Miles and miles ♪

♪ The tongues of the ocean ♪

♪ Tarmac and teenage tears ♪

♪ Life it just happens ♪

♪ Those roads and the lessons ♪

♪ Always from things I feared ♪

♪ When I was young ♪

♪ I cared for no one ♪

♪ I had my fun ♪

♪ But I was broken ♪

♪ Piece by piece ♪

♪ Stone by stone. . ♪

Vitamin C, magnesium, electrolytes.

From five minutes ago.

♪ . is above as below ♪

♪ Where is my home? ♪

♪ Where's my garden ♪

♪ When I'm alone ♪

[Craig] So, Pete, this is, you know,

we're talking about, these are daikons.

[Pete] We should see it in close-up.

But they. . they probably have other

characteristics that would come out.

-[Pete] We ferment them. -Oh,

betcha that would be amazing.

♪ Love with condition ♪

♪ A family tradition ♪

♪ Don't make it Right or wrong ♪

♪ Now for the reverse ♪

♪ Of pain to you endured ♪

♪ You were the strongest one ♪

♪ When you were young ♪

[man] Okay, ready.

We'll do it over there. So can we see the crude oil?

-Yes, let's go. -Awesome.

Show me the way.

It does smell good in here.

It smells really good.

So they're the terpenes?

Yes, absolutely, the terpene profile

is what you're smelling.

Hello.

[dog and Pete barking at each other]

[dog barking]

♪ . is above as below ♪

♪ We'll build our home ♪

♪ We'll grow a garden ♪

♪ When we get old ♪

♪ Will we stay open? ♪

♪ Open ♪

♪ Open ♪

♪ Will we stay open? ♪

[Jenny] Ben, do you want any of this?

[Ben] Yeah, I'll take some.

[Pete] We'll do us first.

This plant is really hearty.

We have it coming up in our yard

and we didn't even plant it.

It comes up in the spring

a month before we can grow anything else.

And I don't water it and it still survives.

I mean, it's amazing.

♪ You are my home ♪

♪ You are my garden ♪

♪ When we get old ♪

♪ Will we stay open? ♪

♪ Open ♪

♪ Open ♪

♪ Will we stay open? ♪

I would love to believe that humanity is waking up.