Matt Figi hugs daughter Charlotte, 7, in 2014 file photo as they wander around a greenhouse where the Charlotte’s Web strain of medical marijuana is grown in a remote spot in the mountains west of Colorado Springs. (Brennan Linsley, Associated Press file)
“To these people, marijuana isn’t about getting high, it’s about getting well,” Harry Smith narrates in NBC’s “Dateline” episode about medical marijuana June 7.
“Growing Hope” chronicles the lives of children with intractable epilepsy, following three families from Virginia to Colorado. Their mission is to legalize CBD and THCA oils, compounds that come from the marijuana and hemp plants.
The and “Charlotte’s Web” gets another look here, filtered through the Virginia push — not for legalization but for permission to use the drug.
Smith returns to his Colorado home turf for this heart-wrenching documentary. “The state has become something of a new Lourdes,” he says. No Bob Marley posters, Smith says inside a cannabis oil lab, “just plants and science.”
Smith asks the about whether their Evangelical Christian beliefs conflicted with their pursuit of the cannabis oil for kids having seizures. Not at all, they answer. Lots of evangelical families have produced rebels, they say.
Smith interviews scientists and patients, including a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who attempted suicide multiple times and calls himself a “marijuana refugee”; he moved his family to Colorado and credits cannabis with saving his life.
Consider this latest update on the lobbying efforts for medical marijuana part of an ongoing, visually stunning story.
