HEALTH
states when they enact a medical cannabis law,
the CDC did a study showing that a year after the
law passes, there’s an actual 20 to 30% decrease
in deaths due to opiate overdoses within that
state. I think that medical cannabis can have a
major impact on decreasing deaths from opiate
overdoses, as well as decreasing the addiction to
those substances.
for almost the last five years. This poor woman
walked in with a cane, hunched over, really want-
ed to improve her quality of life, and began us-
ing our hemp-based CBD oil. It took about three
months to wean her off, because you can’t go off
opiates cold turkey – the withdrawal symptoms
are really tremendous and patients just feel aw-
ful. It took us three months, but we successfully
weaned her off of all her opiates, both short and
long-acting, and she actually has been able to
start exercising, got herself a physical trainer, has
no use for a cane anymore. It’s really improved
her quality of life.
Wow. You briefly talked about its use in can-
cer. I know that the traditional practice is that
you cannot say that anything cures cancer,
but if it induces cell apoptosis, that’s a pretty
good result. How effective is it in cancers, and
are there certain cancers that it’s more effec-
tive in than others?
Do you think that it has a beneficial effect on
helping people wean themselves from opioid
dependence? Also, can you switch to develop
a dependence on marijuana?
Okay, first, that’s a great question. The studies
that have been done on the addictiveness of can-
nabis show that it is comparable to the addictive
level of caffeine. Most researchers have found that
there is about a 6% incidence of addiction rate
with cannabis use, and that’s about equivalent to
people that are caffeine users. If you look at other
drugs, opiates it’s in the mid-20’s, cocaine is in the
low to mid-30’s, 30% range for addictiveness, and
then if you get to heroin, it’s sort of 50-50. I think
that cannabis really can be a great treatment for
patients that have opiate addiction, and I’ve used
it successfully, used non-THC, so CBD products
from hemp, to wean people off of their opiate use.
Just to give you a brief example, I have a patient
who’s a social worker for Kaiser Permanente in
the east bay in California, and has been on opiates
for 15 years due to fibromyalgia. She has been on
both Oxycontin, as well as acute relief Percocet
10 | HAPI Guide
Great question. Both THC and CBD are effective
against cancers; it has to do with the cell type. Re-
search that’s been done, like I said, is mostly ani-
mal research. When you use high dose THC or CBD
products, based on the cell type of cancer, you’ll
see a profound reduction in tumor size. Like you
said, I can’t tell someone that it’s going to cure
their cancer, but there’s a definite reduction in the
size of the tumor burden that a person may have.
THC is a great adjunct to use in patients that have
brain cancers, like glioblastoma, whereas if you
have a tumor that’s more breast or uterine like
sarcoma, then you’re better off using a high-CBD
oil to treat that.
In terms of cancer therapy, people don’t realize
that they have to take really large amounts. Rick
Simpson, the originator or founder of Rick Simp-
son Oil, is a person from Canada who’s an advo-
cate for cannabis use in the treatment of cancer.
His protocol is using 60 grams of concentrated oil
over a period of three months, and then usually
some amount of maintenance after that, usually
100 to 200 milligrams a day. I currently have pa-
tients with different types of cancers that are on
high concentration oil, from an 11-year-old with
glioma, to somebody in their mid-40’s with breast
cancer, and patients with uterine cancer.