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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren vogebam here. After five plus years of deep researching

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Speaker 1: potential medicinal uses for cannabis, Sanjay Gupta, neurosurgeon, professor at

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Speaker 1: Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and most famously

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Speaker 1: medical correspondent for cable news giant CNN, has settled firmly

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Speaker 1: on this conclusion. We'd works, and not for everybody, but

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Speaker 1: for a lot of people it can ease pain, reduce inflammation,

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Speaker 1: and for many who struggle with opioid addictions, it can

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Speaker 1: help them kick their habits by tamping down the nausea, insomnia,

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Speaker 1: and other symptoms that characterize opioid withdrawal. Very possibly, cannabis

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Speaker 1: may help heal brain damage caused by opioids too. Gupta

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Speaker 1: has not always believed this. He wrote a piece for

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Speaker 1: Time Magazine in two thousand nine outlining his opposition to

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Speaker 1: the legalization of pot even for medicinal use. His turnabouts

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Speaker 1: since then has made him an unlikely ally of the

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Speaker 1: pro can this crowd and put him publicly at odds

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Speaker 1: with a government that still places cannabis in the same

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Speaker 1: class of drugs as heroin. And LSD Dr Sanjay Gupta,

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Speaker 1: CNN star practicing brain surgeon and medical marijuana advocate. Who

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Speaker 1: would thunk it? Gupta says, I don't really know that

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Speaker 1: I see this as being an advocate. I think for me,

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Speaker 1: it was not advocacy journalism as much as it was

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Speaker 1: evidenced based journalism that hopefully spoke truth to power. Gupta's

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Speaker 1: about face on cannabis, or maybe it's better described as

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Speaker 1: a slow, steady, deeply thought out awakening, is grounded in

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Speaker 1: years of journalistic research highlighted in the CNN documentary Weed.

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Speaker 1: The fourth installment of the series Weed four Pot Versus Pills,

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Speaker 1: examined the use of medical cannabis who help solve America's

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Speaker 1: addiction to opioids. It's a crisis crying for answers. According

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Speaker 1: to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, more than a

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen Americans die every day from opioid overdose,

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Speaker 1: usually prescription painkillers, heroin, or synthetic opioids Like to Know.

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Speaker 1: One study puts the economic burden of the epidemic at

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Speaker 1: more than seventy eight billion dollars a year. At least

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Speaker 1: part of the solution to combating the opioid crisis to

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Speaker 1: a growing number of researchers and doctors, including Gupta, is cannabis,

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Speaker 1: a long stigmatized drug used recreationally and therapeutically. Those researchers

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Speaker 1: and doctors are just beginning to unlock what happens when

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Speaker 1: pot hits the brain and how that can help break

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Speaker 1: an addiction to opioids. Opiates block the transmission of pain

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Speaker 1: signals to the brain, and they can be very good

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Speaker 1: at it. The problem is that the drugs are highly addictive,

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Speaker 1: users need more and more to get the same relief,

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Speaker 1: making them extremely dangerous. They can, Gupta explains, in weed

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Speaker 1: four actually turn off the body's natural instinct to breathe,

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Speaker 1: leading to tens of thousands of deaths a year. Gupta says,

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Speaker 1: opiates tend to cause this disruption in an area of

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Speaker 1: the brain around these glutamate receptors. I liken it to

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Speaker 1: having two big cities, New York in Chicago, and you

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Speaker 1: need to send these signals back and forth, fire air

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Speaker 1: planes to these two cities, and suddenly all the transportation

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Speaker 1: is down once hooked on opiates, and that can happen

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Speaker 1: as quickly as in a couple of weeks addiction is

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Speaker 1: very difficult to break, possibly because of the damage the

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Speaker 1: drugs do in a certain area of the brain, the

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Speaker 1: prefrontal cortex. Gupta explains that part of the brain is

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Speaker 1: sort of a judgment area where you start to learn things.

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Speaker 1: Some of the wisdom that has come out recently is

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Speaker 1: that even if you stop taking the opiates, you don't

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Speaker 1: necessarily heal that part of the brain. You're still at

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Speaker 1: risk of relapsing in some ways. The brain is not

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Speaker 1: able to remember the negative impact of the opiates. Cannabis,

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Speaker 1: like opiates, also blocks pain signals, Gupta says, but it

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Speaker 1: also reduces inflammation that can lead to further pain. And

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Speaker 1: the real advantage of cannabis for opioid addicts, Gupta says,

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Speaker 1: and here he points out the groundbreaking research of Dr

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Speaker 1: Yasmin Heard, the director of the Addiction Institute at Mount

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Speaker 1: Sinai in New York. Maybe that the cannabidiol or c

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Speaker 1: b D compound in the plant can fix the receptors

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Speaker 1: damaged in the brain from opioid use and can make

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Speaker 1: communication in the brain whole again. Gupta says. The idea

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Speaker 1: that cb D can heal the deceased brain of an

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Speaker 1: addict was the real takeaway for me. There's nothing else

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Speaker 1: that we know of that can really do that in

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Speaker 1: the way CBD does. One of the more than four

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Speaker 1: hundred chemical compounds in the cannabis plant, c b D

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Speaker 1: is used often for medicinal purposes in children for diseases

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Speaker 1: like epilepsy, and is legal even in seventeen of the

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Speaker 1: most cannabis opposed states. CBD does not contain the psychoactive

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Speaker 1: part of the plant, known as th HC that produces

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Speaker 1: the high of cannabis use. The pro cannabis crowd points

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Speaker 1: out that no one has ever overdosed on cannabis or CBD,

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Speaker 1: making it infinitely more preferable to other addiction breaking therapies

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Speaker 1: that use opiates like sobox zone or methadone to wean

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Speaker 1: addicts off stronger opiates like heroin. Still, cannabis use is

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Speaker 1: not without its dangers, especially for younger people with developing brains.

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Speaker 1: Gupta says cannabis can be addictive and the psychoactive part

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Speaker 1: of the plant can hair a motor function and judgment.

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Speaker 1: Despite cannabis negatives, the biggest hurdle that we'd advocates face

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Speaker 1: is clear the plant remains a federally regulated Schedule one drug.

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Speaker 1: Though many states have legalized CBD and have approved cannabis

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Speaker 1: for medicinal uses, and some have even ocated for recreational

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Speaker 1: or otherwise personal use, it is still illegal on the

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Speaker 1: federal level. Many in the current presidential administration seem hell

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Speaker 1: bent on keeping it that way. The nation's top drug

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Speaker 1: enforcement official, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has spoken out forcefully

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Speaker 1: against the legalization of cannabis and seems defiant in his

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Speaker 1: opposition to the work of Mount Sinise Herd and others.

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Speaker 1: Sessions apparent reluctance to look at the potential good of

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Speaker 1: cannabis is not unusual. Many people still see cannabis as

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Speaker 1: a gateway too harder drugs, a theory that's been debated

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Speaker 1: for years, debunked by some and revived by others through

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Speaker 1: the work of Herd and many others. Though it's becoming

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Speaker 1: much more difficult to blindly accept the old way of

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Speaker 1: looking at cannabis, Good to stands as one of the

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Speaker 1: more public examples of someone who has accepted new evidence,

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Speaker 1: and he's glad to share his findings with the powerful.

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Speaker 1: In April, he wrote an open letter to Sessions after

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Speaker 1: Sessions repeatedly turned down Gupta's requests for interviews. Research by

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Speaker 1: Herd and others, including University of California, San Diego and

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Speaker 1: entusiologist Mark Wallace, who has been looking at cannabis as

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Speaker 1: an alternative pain reliever for more than twenty years, continues,

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Speaker 1: even though studying the medicinal uses of cannabis is difficult

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Speaker 1: because of its status as a Schedule one drug. Gupta says,

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Speaker 1: I think it's one of those situations where everybody who

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Speaker 1: is responsible in this whole discussion wants more data. The

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Speaker 1: situation I think we find ourselves in is there isn't

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Speaker 1: a real mechanism by which to obtain that data given

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Speaker 1: the regulations right now around medicinal marijuana. The debate on

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Speaker 1: how to research cannabis, or even if we should study

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Speaker 1: it continues too, though a showdown may be coming. In June,

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Speaker 1: the US Food and Drug Administration approved a CBD based drug,

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Speaker 1: a pity elect for the treatment of epilepsy, that puts

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Speaker 1: the ft A in a strange position a federal agency

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Speaker 1: giving the go ahead to a cannabis derived drug even

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Speaker 1: as it remains illegal on the federal level. Researchers and

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Speaker 1: proponents like Gupta, hope that this will push the government

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Speaker 1: to reschedule cannabis as a less dangerous drug. Rescheduling would

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Speaker 1: make research easier and perhaps someday unlock more federally approved

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Speaker 1: uses for a plant that may yet play a major

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Speaker 1: part in bettering even saving thousands of American lives from

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Speaker 1: opioid addiction. Gupta said, over the next year, my guess

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Speaker 1: is We're going to see a significant transformation with regard

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Speaker 1: to medical marijuana in this country. We're seeing something that

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Speaker 1: I've never seen before in my medical life, an entirely

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Speaker 1: new class of medications that could be used to treat

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Speaker 1: a wide variety of things. Today's episode was written by

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Speaker 1: John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. To hear more

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Speaker 1: about the history of cannabis in the United States, including

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Speaker 1: why I'm largely calling it cannabis and not marijuana, check

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Speaker 1: out the episode of my other show food Stuff, called

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Speaker 1: the Fully Baked Episode on Cannabis Edibles, featuring an interview

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Speaker 1: with Becca Grim of Dope Girls. This is where I'm

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Speaker 1: supposed to remind you to contain yourself in brain Stuff

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Speaker 1: themed t shirts from our online shop at t public

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Speaker 1: dot com slash Brainstuff and of course, for more on

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Speaker 1: this and lots of other fully baked topics, visit our

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Speaker 1: home planet, how stuff Works dot com.