VIDEO: Montana PBS documentary on medical marijuana

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MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: I have taken pretty much every anti-epileptic on the market, and some with a little bit more success than others.

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PBS Reporter ANNA RAU: None of them stopped her seizures, and, by her early 20s, the epilepsy had also spawned depression, anxiety and insomnia. She had to withdraw from college just a few credits short of a fine arts degree. Unable to hold a job, she was bed-bound for years while the epilepsy ruled her life.

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MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: It’s not a life, to live like that.

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ANNA RAU: Then she remembered reading stories about the potential of cannabis to treat epileptic seizures, and she desperately wanted to try it, but her home state doesn’t have a medical marijuana law.

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MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: So, I did what I could do. I moved to a state where I could treat it myself.

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DR. ERIC VOTH: If we’re delivering THC, which is the major active ingredient, shouldn’t we be delivering that alone or other cannabinoids alone? But, in fact, what we’re doing is we’re delivering not only one, but 66 cannabinoids. On top of that, were delivering hundreds of contaminants.

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ANNA RAU: This epilepsy patient says she’s willing to take the risk, because something in that cornucopia of substances has changed her life.

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How did that impact your seizures?

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MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: They started slowing down. I had to build it up in my system. And it wasn’t until I started ingesting it that they really stopped completely.

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DR. ERIC VOTH: I’m very suspicious about it because for someone to have been on 14 medications and not solve her problem, and then have this miraculous benefit from one medicine, I just find that suspect.

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ANNA RAU: But the potential of marijuana to mitigate epileptic seizures has been recognized by the U.S. Institute of Medicine. The institute has released two reports on the therapeutic potential of cannabis.

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The first report, from 1982, found “substantial evidence from animal studies to indicate that cannabinoids are effective in blocking seizures.” Scientists who wrote the 1999 report also found marijuana had anti-seizure effects, but doubted it could be developed into a pharmaceutical-grade epilepsy drug.

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ANNA RAU: Dr. Prakash Nagarkatti is a professor of pathology and microbiology at the University of South Carolina. He’s one of many scientists in a race to unlock the mysteries of the receptors by using newly created synthetic drugs, instead of tightly restricted whole cannabis.

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These synthetics have made research much easier and potentially lucrative. The U.S. patent database shows numerous large pharmaceutical companieshave filed recent patents, claiming their cannabinoid receptor drug has the potential to treat almost everything: multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, rheumatoid arthritis, Tourette’s, epilepsy, heart disease, obesity, various mental illnesses and the Holy Grail of medicine, a cancer cure.

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Dr. Nagarkatti and his team of researchers were one of the first labs to prove a cannabinoid key can seek out a cancerous cell in the immune system, unlock the receptor, and direct the cancer cell to self-destruct.

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DR. PRAKASH NAGARKATTI: So, basically, telling the cells basically to commit suicide.

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ANNA RAU: Dr. Nagarkatti’s experimental drug was able to eradicate almost 100 percent of the cancer in test tubes. And when they moved on to live mice:

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DR. PRAKASH NAGARKATTI: To our surprise, we found that almost 25 to 30 percent of the mice completely rejected the tumor. They were completely cured.

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ANNA RAU: Tumors in the rest of the mice shrank significantly. The results have been so promising that Dr. Nagarkatti is already beginning clinical trials with leukemia patients.

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Dr. Voth believes researchers like Nagarkatti are headed in the right direction.

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DR. ERIC VOTH: Let’s keep it in the corridors of science. Let’s keep it in the FDA. Let’s deliver what’s really medicine. That is the individual cannabinoids.