I love you.
I love my mommy and she likes me.
I had Dahlia five years ago, so she's five years old right now and was diagnosed with
brain cancer when she was two.
So I went from having this dancing affectionate, happy playing two-year-old baby girl to having
this dying patient in a hospital bed overnight, literally.
Dahlia's nightmare had just begun because while still intubated from that surgery, she
was started on chemotherapy.
It's a pretty barbaric treatment.
Technically, chemotherapy is a poison.
The original chemotherapy drug was a derivative of mustard gas.
As a single mom, we had no life anymore.
Everything disappeared.
We lived solely to save Dahlia's life.
I had no idea from the time of diagnosis on that I would have literally no options.
The very first surgery that she underwent, they literally told me that if I didn't agree
to that surgery, they would do it without my permission.
That if I did not agree to the conventional treatment options they were going to give
me which consist of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, the state would take custody
of her and she would undergo those treatments without me.
My daughter was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two.
She was diagnosed with T-cell ALL which is quite more aggressive than your normal PV leukemia.
She went into surgery right away.
We started a chemotherapy 12 different times.
Within the first week, she could not hold her head up.
She couldn't hold her head up.
She couldn't hold her own cup.
A week before this, she was just a normal little girl running around, playing, and now
she literally can't do anything but lay in the bed.
They said, you know what, this is normal, this is what chemotherapy does.
We did have a sit down with her doctor and we asked, what are our other options?
We were told if you don't do this, your daughter will die in two weeks.
That's what we were told.
I didn't know at the time that in the United States if you have a child diagnosed with cancer
and you don't do chemotherapy, they will call CPS and they'll take your kid away.
They'll put you in jail and then your kid will still go through chemotherapy.
How much money does chemotherapy make?
It's a billion dollars.
Unlike other kinds of doctors, physicians who treat cancer are allowed to profit from the
sale of chemotherapy drugs.
Medical professionals are not evil.
Their hands are tied.
We have some really bad laws.
Dahlia was prescribed some really harsh and dangerous drugs.
Some of the medications come with side effects like psychosis, homicide, suicide, death and
that's all we have to offer these children.
At some point this shock started to wear off and a few months into treatment I realized
that my daughter was going to die unless I did something about it.
I looked up over the course of just a few months thousands of supplements and alternative
treatments.
What I found time and time again was that cannabis was very efficient just for treating
the symptoms and side effects of both the disease and its treatment.
So I let her medical professionals know that I was having cannabis shipped into an illegal
state in Tennessee where St. Jude is and we were all on board that it was none of our
jobs to enforce laws.
Our job was to enforce the well-being of this child.
My dad just had to go do some times.
He's now doing two years for marijuana.
How do we have 5% of the world's population and 25% of the prisoners?
Why is our prison population for profit?
How do we have 7 to 1 black and brown people to whites in prison?
It's the new Jim Crow.
We woke up to take the kids to school like we did every day.
Chris had noticed.
There's a lot of place out today.
They followed us over 8 miles.
We got up to a 4-way stop.
It was a big intersection by the kids' school.
The truck turned right and he was ripped out of the vehicle by a swat.
I was pulled out by my hair backwards by police officers.
One man grabbed my daughter inside leaning in my vehicle with a big gun and he grabbed
her shoulders and started pushing them with the guns in the kids' faces.
They took me and my kids to the sheriff's department and we sat there together.
My kids had to sit there for over 6 hours.
We had a business.
We had an attorney telling us what to do.
As far as we knew, we were following the laws.
We were doing what Arizona said that we needed to do.
Me and Chris met when I was 15.
We've been together now 13 years.
We've never been apart.
This is a shock.
The kids have never been away from him.
We've always done everything as a family.
I want to legalize cannabis.
We aren't the only family this has happened to.
My kids aren't the only kids that have been tortured or scared by this.
We're not the only ones and the more people can see that there are so many of us, it's
not okay.
I think people need to see the severity of what's really happening over a plan, over
something that's saving people.
Russell Simmons, I'm chairman of Rush Communications.
When we looked deeply, we found that 94% of people in jail are black or brown.
It's horrible what the prison industrial complex has done to the American people.
The prison industrial complex has a chokehold on our politicians and for years they've implemented
laws that have been hurtful to communities and helpful to their cause, $60,000 per bed.
It's a lot of money that locks somebody up.
That's enough money to send somebody to college.
It's hard for me.
It's been a long time since we've seen them.
The kids miss them.
Of course I miss them.
The war on drugs has been a terrible disappointment.
Marijuana is a Mexican name for cannabis or hemp.
Why was that chosen?
Well, it was a war on the Mexican farm worker.
When you go back and take a look at Reef or Madness, that wonderful little movie that
was created by Mr. Hurst, you understand that Reef or Madness had a plan behind it.
It wasn't to save you from yourself.
When you explain to the politician in your town, do you know that Hurst, Andrew Mellon
and Dupont got together to create this idea of the war on marijuana, the Mexican word
for hemp, and asked him if they knew that the flag that flew over this great country
was printed on hemp.
Asked them if they knew that everybody in the beginning of this country was mandated
to grow hemp.
Did you know in 1619 there was a law that ordered all of the farmers to grow cannabis
hemp?
It was the illegal tender they could pay the taxes in America for over 200 years.
Back in 1763 you would be put in jail if you didn't grow your cannabis hemp for the government.
I started her on cannabis oil about six months into treatment.
The very first night that she took oil, she slept through the night for the first time
in her entire life.
She gained three pounds the first week she was on oil.
All of the science, for or against in the world, doesn't even matter.
You're witnessing it with your own eyes.
I'm just so ashamed to admit, but had this been on a ballot in front of me, I don't
think I would have voted for it.
I also never had somebody sit down in front of me and explain to me that this was medicine.
You're ready to think weed kills your brain cells and you're ready to think that it's
bad.
When I first started learning about it, I did think that it was probably not the smartest
thing to do, but I was so uneducated.
It actually protects your brain cells.
When you have something so powerful that can not only help with the side effects and symptoms,
it actually kills cancer cells.
Yes.
Serious.
Wild, but not legal.
It seems astounding and hypocritical to many that the government created this patent over
10 years ago, while simultaneously pushing the costly war on drugs.
Welcome to SGMD, treating cancer with marijuana.
I'm going to show you why some doctors don't think it's such a crazy idea.
You know, I get asked a lot, is medical marijuana just a hoax, an excuse to smoke pot?
Well, it's true.
You know, some doctors are going to prescribe it for just about anything, but when I dug
into this, I also found something else.
Serious physicians out there who think cannabis could become a real tool to fight all sorts
of things, including cancer.
Good job.
Brandon Riddle was a normal two-year-old boy until he was diagnosed with leukemia.
They told us he doesn't look sick, very sick to y'all, but he's on the brink of death.
Doctors in Salt Lake City immediately started intense chemotherapy and radiation.
But told us that he probably wasn't going to make it, that he only had like an 8 percent
chance to live 24 to 48 hours.
The chemo made him violently ill.
He was in intense pain, he suffered nerve damage in his legs, and he went 25 days without
eating.
Around the clock, he's usually on liquid morphine, ativan, permythazine, and it just
really didn't seem to be helping.
And then, she heard about medical marijuana.
We didn't have anything else to lose.
One chemical in marijuana, THC, is responsible for the psychoactive effects, or the high.
It also combats nausea and pain.
But another chemical, called CBD, seems to have additional benefits.
It's a natural antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-convulsive.
If you have diabetes, it helps lower your blood sugars.
It helps cholesterol, bring your cholesterol down, blood pressures down.
And these are all testimonies from different people with different ailments.
And then, for people who don't have anything wrong, who just want to live a healthier lifestyle.
In January, Landon began taking both as an oil.
As soon as we started doing the oil, his playlets have been above normal for a cancer patient.
They've been at a regular, healthy person's level, and they can't understand why.
And it's this effect that is intrigued researchers.
In San Francisco, these researchers say that compound, CBD, can kill cancer cells and stop
them from metastasizing in human cells and mice.
Landon has been off chemo for three weeks.
And whether or not the cannabis actually played a role, his mother says his leukemia is currently
in remission.
When my head hurts, my mommy puts medicine in my mouth, and then it eats my whole body.
That's good.
Our medicine saved me so long.
Oh, no, really?
Was there something in here once?
Yeah, there was cancer in there.
And then what happened?
We killed the cancer.
Wow, you're so strong.
Like you said.
I said, don't come back, cancer.
And I like that, and I agree.
It seems like a really, really good mom, huh?
Because she never gives up on her gift.
Whoa, really?
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
Mommy, thank you.
Oh, my God.
Next year, 14 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in just this country alone, and
8 million of them will die.
On top of that, the pharmaceutical industry will deal over $300 billion worth of drugs,
which will lead to 16,000 overdoses.
So what are we doing about this?
These types of things are things that I think canomoms as an organization really helps to
raise awareness of and education about.
And it's a domino effect, because we are going to touch thousands of people nationwide
and globally.
And in a few generations, the healthcare system we see in America today, the fact that we
have not a single cure for a single disease or illness that these children suffer from,
that's all going to be changed, and it's going to be through the parents.
Alexis was seven and a half.
When fires hit, she was a previously normal, healthy child, walking around, talking, going
to school.
She had a fever for a couple of days, and dad thought he heard something in the middle
of the night and went checked on her, and we found her having her first seizure.
She was put in a medically induced coma for four and a half months.
Your body shouldn't be sleeping for that long.
And then when she came out?
Not the same kid.
And she continues to seize.
She has permanent brain damage now, and I know that a lot of it is from how long she
was in a coma before.
And the drugs, I mean, that's just poison.
It's just poison, like constantly in you at all times.
She's been on some pretty nasty, disgusting stuff.
I think she's tried almost everything out there, and right now she's on seven, including
a specialized diet that she's on.
It's been just a constant for the last three years, just a constant trying to get these
meds out of her, just trying to get a little bit at a time, just lower it, lower it, lower
it, because every time that we do, it's like a new kid.
A little piece of her comes back.
Every time that we take a little bit of those drugs away from her, she does amazing.
When she left the hospital, she couldn't even hold her head up.
Like, we literally had to stop while we were walking her in her wheelchair and fix her
head for fear that it was just going to snap.
And now, I mean, she's got some serious arm strength.
I didn't know that Alexis did understand what was going on around her until her dad
and I were sitting on the couch one day, and I was telling him a pretty complicated,
sad story. I mean, it was sad.
Anybody that heard it would have cried.
And I looked over at her, this is before she was saying anything, I looked over at her
and she was crying.
And that's when I knew that she completely understood what was going on.
And I'm so grateful that that situation happened because I don't know if we would have
realized that she was trapped in there.
So she's trapped inside her body?
Yeah.
That's basically what it is.
She's trapped on drugs, pharmaceuticals that are killing her brain.
Yes.
And killing her motor skills.
But maybe she wasn't on so much medication and she did have the CBD oil.
It would be a little easier.
I believe that it would make our life a lot easier.
If it were legal, I definitely would be giving Alexis medical marijuana, CBD, whatever we
could get our hands on.
I mean, whatever to help her, I mean, it's natural.
It's so much better than this garbage that she has to be on.
I just wish that it wasn't so hard to get something that's just so natural.
It's not fair.
It's just, it's not fair.
She deserves it.
She's so amazing, she just needs to be back and have control.
You don't know until you live this life, until you are trapped in your own body or you're
watching your daughter trapped.
When she is in there and sharing so hard to get out, you don't know.
You don't know the pain and the misery that she has got to be in.
I can tell.
I mean, she has awesome days.
She's having a pretty good day right now, but there's days that she's miserable and
we're miserable and it's not fair.
It wouldn't harm anybody else.
Awesome legs.
Wow.
Oh my God.
We were traveling overseas, we were in Amman, Jordan.
Brandon developed a fever.
We were told that he had some sort of viral infection and with antibiotics it would go away.
But on July 17th of 2010, at 7 p.m., Brandon woke up from his nap.
He walked into the kitchen and he stopped talking.
His hand went up in the air and he was having a seizure.
They tried to stabilize him, but nothing was working.
That morning he woke up in the middle of the night and he said, Mom, I have to go to the bathroom.
And I was so happy.
I was like, this is great.
This is just a bad nightmare.
It's going to go away.
He walked and he said, Mommy, I have to go back to sleep now because I'm tired.
But I love you.
And that was the last time that I heard my son speak to me the way I knew him.
They told us that because of all the medications that was pumped into his body that he would probably suffer severe withdrawals.
When he woke up, he was delusional, hallucinating.
He was trying to hit us and bite us.
He was growling at us like an animal.
Squeeze my hand. It's okay.
The seizures just never seemed to stop, but neither does Brandon's mother.
Brandon.
You have witnessed him being bigger than you.
He's a teenager now and is on medication that causes severe side effects.
I think that the only thing worse than the pain that they endure is to watch their fear.
You watch Brandon go from being this happy, loving, affectionate boy to hallucinating and seeing things that aren't there from these FDA-approved drugs he's on.
Mommy, I'm so sad. Leave me alone. Do not be mad at me.
I'm not mad at you.
You're going to help me to make it?
Yes, I need you to be just relaxed.
Okay, so we'll be nice. We'll get mommy. Can I see you?
Before my son became ill, I never even thought about cannabis. It never crossed my mind.
Three years ago, I received this message and it said to me,
Renee, do you know that cannabis could potentially save your son's life?
In 2014, Petro took her son to California for two weeks to legally consume cannabis.
Miraculously, she says his seizures stopped.
A totally different child. He was able to function normally. He went seizure-free.
On prescribed medicines, Petro says that Brandon has upwards of eight seizures a day.
We will not stop educating the people on why this needs to be brought to our state.
I won't deny that pharmaceutical medications didn't save my son's life in the acute phase.
Had I known what I know now about cannabis and the medicinal properties of the entire plant,
had I known that this could have potentially spared my son the suffering and the pain that I witnessed,
things could have been different right now.
I was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. I used to have between five and seven grandmals a month.
When switching to cannabis, I went 35 months completely seizure-free. That was amazing.
I've been a nurse for 15 years and I knew that there was something wrong with me and I kept having physicians
tell me that there was nothing that they could find.
I ended up in the emergency room and they found a nine-millimeter stone in my right kidney that had been there for so long
I had become septic. I was basically dying, but I used cannabis for healing in Colorado Cannabis Oil specifically
and I truly believe that it absolutely helped save my life.
They would rather me take Percocets and Loretabs as much as I want, morphine, but anything except if I use marijuana
or any sort of marijuana or oil, I will not be allowed to be on the transplant list, even if I have my own organ donor.
I'm a veteran. I went to get a yearly physical and he found small celled carcinoma on my lungs, liver cancer
and I have a third cancer they can't find.
The doctors at the PA gave me four months to live. I think the Lord I'm still alive eight months past
and the oil is what saved me. I haven't done anything but the oil.
I feel 100%. I'm ready to go skiing and go hunting. I would recommend this to anybody.
I don't care who you are. This is natural. You can't beat it. Don't pass this up. I got great kids.
Let me get to see them. Graduates have kids.
My husband of 37 years, he died four months ago and he had brain damage from playing football.
He was diagnosed with dementia. He could not talk. He could not communicate.
He was hitting the walls in the windows. He was so afraid of everyone.
As soon as I found this product, this Colorado cannabis oil, I would give it to him twice a day
and they helped me here at Caregivers for Life. It really changed his life, his quality of life until he died.
I mean it was like night and day. He smiled. He was trying to talk. It was just a miracle.
And I truly hope people will listen and try it as an alternative for their loved ones.
I came back for football after a year on.
A 28 yard burst and strength by Ricky Williams.
After such a long layoff, we saw Ricky Williams come back last year. But this year, boy, does he look good.
And now I'm an advocate. One, because I truly believe that cannabis helped me play football for 11 years.
And I also look at how my life was almost ruined because I failed a drug test for cannabis.
I'm advocating so people don't have to experience what I experienced for taking care of themselves and doing what's right.
The NFL drowns in pain pills. It's the grease that keeps the league running.
This is the most frightening epidemic I've seen probably since the methamphetamine epidemic beginning in the early 90s.
Well, right now I'm most interested in pain relief. For me personally and the people I'm close with, my former teammates.
As you see far too many of us suffering.
It's a win-win for everybody.
I've written a lot of essays on this and the people that are using it get really pretty amazing results.
All the stories we just heard are typical of what I do every day as I hear those stories over and over and over again.
I got a question.
I'm not complacent, adjacent to a man impatiently, erasing me and racing me.
Are we a race that's free? Planetary times are chased with planetary changes.
Are you with me when I say I see? Potentially we're here on heaven.
How you gonna change the world? Are you gonna be the changer?
Are you gonna wait for change to rearrange you? How you gonna change the world?
Are you gonna be the changer? Are you gonna wait for change to rearrange you?
How you gonna change the world? Are you gonna be the changer?
Are you gonna wait for change to rearrange you? How you gonna change the world?
Are you gonna be the change?
I'm feeling antsy. You glance at me, I trance away.
A greeting isn't meeting, it's just fearing what you'll take away.
But I love life as you live life. I honor your deepest creation in this life.
I encourage you to love yourself and be yourself with the highest good.
I love fine.
How you gonna change the world? Are you gonna be the changer?
How you gonna change the world? Are you gonna be the changer?
Are you gonna wait for change to rearrange you? How you gonna change the world?
