September 24, 2019 • 30 mins
He’s the man who knows no limits. From being one of the most iconic daytime TV hosts to becoming one of the highest profile trailblazers in the advocacy for medical marijuana, Montel Williams has always been ahead of the times on the topics that matter most.
In this interview, he’s opening up about a health scare that almost changed his life forever, and what’s next in his mission to empower people to take control of their own health.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It was almost an epiphany. It changed my life. I
mean I stopped emotional now, but I mean stopped crying
every day on my show. I stopped crying every day
in the middle of the day because I was finally
starting to get some relief. And I will tell you
unequippably for everybody listening, I have not gone one day
(00:24):
since two thousand one without putting your cannabinoid in my body. Hi,
(00:46):
I'm Dr Oz and this is the Doctor Oz Podcast.
He's the man who knows no limits, from being one
of the most iconic daytime TV hosts to becoming one
of the highest profile trailblazers in the advocacy for medical marijuana.
Montell Williams has always been ahead of the times on
topics that matter most. Today, he's here opening up about
(01:07):
a health scare that almost changed his life forever and
what's next to his mission to empower people to take
control of their own health. I'm gonna get to this
health crisis in a second. But you're in the news
all over the news these days over medical marijuana. Huge article.
Congratulations about you're beating off the barbarians at the gates
of what you've tried to do building a brand for
(01:28):
yourself and just as close Mentel has a medical marijuana
a medical marijuana brand, but his passion and love of
of helping people learn about marijuana predates that. And I
actually met you when I was still doing the opera show.
You at the time had multiple school rosies you still have,
(01:48):
but that was readabilitating you. I remember seeing the pain
that you experienced when you try to do things without
medical marijuana, and the time you were even talking too
much about it. So let's start back then. What was
that like and what got you to realize that miracle
that Marioneer could play a role. And then I gotta ask,
why take the personal risk your Montell Williams, you could
(02:09):
have hidden, not told anybody, lived your life. People would
have been amazed that you got better, but there was
more to it. Crazy remember you know we talked about
it in one of your shows back in I was
really officially diagnosed in two thousand and one, diagnosed. You know,
my biggest symptom in first symptom was extreme neuropathic pain
(02:30):
in my feet and in my shins. And it was
so bad that at one point time back in two
thousand I was taken probably nine Viking m a day
nine nine. Oh, it was a time when you remember
a drug called taal wind, right. I mean that I
had doctor put me on twin and I was taking
three of those sometimes at a time, and I woke
(02:53):
up literally a couple of times feeling like I was
just drooling in a corner. And my doctor, who was
one and I think, one of the best doctors in
the country, literally who's at Harvard. I went to see
him and he said, dude, I know about you, and
I know what you're doing, and I'm done. I'm not
writing you any more scripts. I said, what, Because I
know you've been running around. I would, you know, come
on a montala So I could call any friend of
(03:14):
mine who got doctor behind the name and say, dude,
can you write me a script for you know, thirty
forty biking in? And of course they would write me
a script fort in I pulled into a city people
that already knew I came forward with the fact that
you know, I've been diagnosed with a mass and I
suffered from pain. So I could call a doctor in
a hotel. They would drop me off thirty biking in
and a heartbeat and homeboy was eating them. So my
(03:38):
doctor said, I'm done. I'm not writing you any more scripts,
and I'm going to reach out to every single one
of the people that I know they have written you
a script so far and tell them to stop. And
he said to me, I heard his exact words. I
heard that some people with MS like you have gotten
some relief from this marijuana stuff. I'm never gonna say
that I told you this. I'm never gonna tell anybody
(03:59):
that I've commended to you. But you need to figure
this out and learning for yourself. I don't have a
lot of research on it, but go get some research
and you have figured out and back in two thousand one,
I started researching cannabis. Back then, by the middle of
two thousand one, I recognize looking at the research from NIDA,
looking at the research that have been published by Dr
Ms Sulem out of Israel, that there was this chemical
(04:22):
in marijuana, something called c b D, and there's several
more that we don't talk about. Unfortunately, just because one
TV special, you know, talked about cb D, the whole
world jumped on it. But nobody's talking about CBN, CBG
t h c A, CBDV. There's so many over four
chemicals in the marijuana plant that, in an entourage effect,
(04:43):
can be responsible for the relief I was getting. But
back in two thousand one, before anybody ever said the
word CBD, I was seeking out cb D strong brands
or breeds of cannabinoids, especially in northern California, and I
was able to find a couple. I should over from
from actually using flower marijuana back in two thousand two
(05:06):
and was only consuming keith, which is really kind of
like the pollen, but the triclones, which is the most
you know, medicinally laden chemicals of the plant. And from
that point forth, maybe it didn't come overnight. Let mean,
let me tell you. When I first started using, I
was like, this isn't gonna work because my pain just
(05:27):
came right through. But then after about twenty days of
use of cannabis back in two thousand one, it was
almost an epiphany. It changed my life. I mean I
had stopped emotional now, but I mean I stopped crying
every day on my show, I stopped crying every day
(05:48):
in the middle of the day because I was finally
starting to get some relief. And I will tell you
unequivalently for everybody listening. I have not gone one day
since two thousand one about putting a cannabinoid in my body.
It's not always been t HC and maybe CBD and
a combination of turpines and other things, but I have
used it every single day. I think that's part of
(06:09):
the reason why, you know, And and yeah, of course
I may be just an end of one. I don't
think I am an end of one. I think that
if some doctors really were to research me and look
into what's going on, what our federal government claims is
happens with cannabinoids, is that there's some neural protection that
has been going on inside of my brain and my
(06:30):
nervous system from my continued use. And I'm at a
saturation point and was deliberately at a subigeration point. And
I think that's what's helped protect me. And when I
shipped it over it changed my life. So how was
the M this community dealt with the fact that you
would outside the system? Oh, let me tell you. You know,
I not only went outside the system using cannabis, but
(06:50):
I went outside the system when I first got diagnosed
because I had found out so many things about the
national MS society and some of the organizations that have
been raising money in people's name and sick people's names
to use the money for other things. So I was
never really and even up until about maybe four or
(07:10):
five years ago, I was disparaged by lots of the
national organizations when it comes to the MS because I
wouldn't jump aboard and throw my name out there and say,
go ahead and raise money and let these people buy
cars and buy planes and buy houses. That's not what
I'm about. I'm about making sure that if we're gonna
do something, that you're gonna do this with a patient
in mind. And I want to make sure if you
call yourself a foundation or a nonprofit, you better be
(07:34):
coughing up at least nine up what you raise to
go to the programs that you claim you're pre going
to them. Independent of all that, there was still a
closing off I think of the medical community to the
possibilities of this. If you can give us a brief
history lesson, I'll start you finish. Thousands of years ago,
tens of thousands of years ago, cannabis plants have to
(07:56):
develop way of protecting themselves, so they began influence seeing
very specific receptors in the brain, just the way opiates
effect endorphins systems, so you go running runners high. It's
not just endorphins, it's also a little bit of and
then cannabinoids and now canabinoid big words. Basically the receptors
for the marijana plant was widely used as medicine for
(08:16):
that reason. By the way, many of the medicines we
use aspen right comes from rule bark a lot of chemotherapies.
Periwinkle plant gives you right to a chemotherapy that we
use for leukemias. So there's a history of plants to
protecting themselves and humans learning how they predict themselves, and
then harvesting it to benefit us. So fast forward, it's
early part of the nineteen nine hundreds and it's being used.
(08:40):
There's how many tinctus are there in hundred with marijuana.
If you go, you can go up look up in
in online, go and pull up any newspaper from eighteen
and flip it back to the classifieds and you'll see
probably twenty tins a page that have some sort of
cannabis product in it. All. Also, i'll see allow of
(09:00):
them to have had cocaine in them, but at cocaine. Yeah, less,
but you'll see a lot of tensures that were sold
all across the country. So we believed in and we
knew that marijuana was a good, efficacious product. But the
problem was you couldn't be back then, you couldn't track
a seed, so across state lines there was an inability
(09:21):
for different states to be able to tax the product appropriately.
So marijuana was made illegal with a lot of people
don't understand by something called the Marijuana Tax Act of
seven and it was promoted and funded by William Roundolph
Hurst and DuPont. Why randolp Hurst was the paper magnate,
he was a furniture magnate. He was a guy trying
(09:41):
to chop down every big tree in America that he
could chop down. His competition was a weed that grows anywhere, hemp.
So he wanted to make sure he could corner the market,
so he backed Henry Anslinger and DuPont wanted to make
something called textiles, and up until this point, every sale,
every rope, every covered wagon, every sheet, even ore. You know,
(10:07):
the the uniforms that were worn in the Civil War,
both the North and the South had somebody in common.
They ran around in hemp uniforms. And you know, a
lot of people don't know even when we made marijuana
illegal in the namesake mayor of the City de la
Guardia commissioned to study and in his study he came
(10:29):
back and said, one of the most egregiously offensive things
that America has done is to make marijuana illegal because
of its medical advocactions. US. When you say the Tax
Act at thirty seven, how did that make it illegal?
They just puts a tax on it. No, it was
a tax act making it illegal to actually use it
across the transport, across their lines, and therefore it shut
(10:51):
down the ability to be able to sell it. And
then Henry Anslinger work for the next forty years untill
about nineties two sixty three to get marijuana band and
hemp band through a U N treaty. And so the
United States banned marijuana. And in that treaty that was
signed in six three, they allowed for testing and for
(11:15):
studies to be done at a country's university level. It
wasn't until under a lot of people don't know this.
And let me give you a little bit more education.
Back when first Bush was president, he started a compassionate
care program that allowed. Back then, they took twenty one
or twenty four patients into a program where the US government,
(11:36):
through a program at the University of Mississippi, for over
forty years, has been growing and distributing marijuana. Started with
twenty three patients. Now it's down to four because they
have passed away. And every month, every Wednesday, I think
(11:57):
it's the first Wednesday of every month, the University of
Mississippi shipped out across the country for the last forty
something years a canister of pre rolled marijuana cigarettes that
individuals were allowed to take on airplanes and cross state ones.
We find who who got these things? Oh, I know
one of the guys I I interviewed on my shows
IRV rosenfeldt IRV, I have one of those camps. Was
(12:17):
the problem they were treating, oh, multiple different problems. Back
the program was shut down and stopped because the second
that the first Bush Bush authorized program AIDS was one
of the first was detected then and so they got inundated.
Fifteen two people wanted to be a part of the program,
and they shut it down and said no more patients.
They have everything from from tumor diseases and bone diseases,
(12:41):
UH neurological diseases. All those twenty one three patients had
a myriad of different homes. They published this date anywhere. Now,
let me let's see if this is what's so criminally
and absurd about this. We have a government that says
we need more research. Yet every year for the last
the plus budgets that have been passed, there is a
(13:03):
budget line that has funded the University of Mississippi to
study and grow marijuana. Not only that, but we also
funded and studies in Israel. We studied back ten years ago,
the federal government gave Raphael Masuam, the doctor in Israel
who discovered the endocannabinoid system, discovered THHC and also discovered
(13:24):
cb D plus CBN and the majority of the cannabinoids
that are discovered today. We funded probably sixty million dollars
of research in Israel for this, and it's been published worldwide.
But the U. S. Government keeps claiming we don't have
enough data. How much more data do you need? First off,
anybody who's a congressman who passed the bill a budget
that have budget line in there to fund this should
(13:46):
go to jail then, because you've been lying to the
American public you live for the last forty years claiming
that you don't have been haven't there's not enough research
has been done, and you've been paying for the research,
which is crazy to me. Did you hear none of it?
You know? I I I should say it right here.
I'm gonna pull it up on my phone. But the
United States government owns the patent on THH C and CBD.
(14:09):
It's patent number looking up yourself, everybody out there, and
it's six six zero five or seven. And it's a
patent that in its own patent application under something that's
called you know, the space where they have to fill
out the abstract where they have to fill out what
it does. The U. S. Government claims unequivocally that it
knows that carnabinoids work for a myriad of the diseases
(14:31):
and has an antioxidative effect, especially when it comes to
some of the chronic illnesses we face today. This was
written over fourteen years ago. There's lots more will be
come back. So tim me back for a second. What
(14:52):
is it that drives the U. S. Government the ban
a substance that arguably has been used her medicinal benefits
from most of the human history. And I know that
in nineteen thirty, the a m A Was asked about
this twenty and thirty experts that part of the survey's
said it was rot it was wrong to ban medical
(15:15):
use of marijuana. So how do we get here? What
was Anton's purpose? You know, if you, if you you
really think about it again, go back to William Raddoy,
Herstan DuPont textiles and his fingers. But but his was
his goal. His goal was and I'm gonna get I
told you, I'm gonna get you this, so you'll be
able to hear it yourself. I could look it up
right now. But Anslinger stood on the steps of the
Capitol in the United in Washington, d C. And made
(15:37):
a statement that marijuana because he wanted to make sure
he could vilify this plan to get people to help
him ban it so that his friends could make money.
But you gotta recognize his whole objective was to make
us a race issue. So he stood on the capitol
steps and said that marijuana makes a black man want
to step on a white man's shadow, and white women
(15:58):
want to have sex with blacks. And hispanic and if
you look at Reefer madness, and some of the literature
that came out back then, they always had a villain
that was a black person hiding in the corner that
was using marijuana, or some some musician with black or
a smanic always crazed. And the truth of the matter is,
I'm gonna knock the medical community a little bit, but
(16:20):
you take a look at at Jerry actually drugs. You know,
in this country right now today we probably have majority
people over the age of seventy or on anywhere from
nine to ten medications. And why did Israel just call
it a jeriatric drug? Because if you give older people cannabis,
it can solve some of the issues that they are
(16:43):
reaching out to have solved by other chemicals. And you
know the amount of money that was spent over the
last seventy now hundred years, almost a hundred years on
other medications that were so much more expensive than I
remember the sativa marijuana play. An implant is a weed.
I can fly over a desert and drop it out
(17:04):
of an airplane, don't have to go back in the
water and go back four months later, and it's grown.
So this is something that doesn't really have to be
cultivated and prone the way we do it now anyway,
which is really kind of stupid, the way it's even
been been processed in the United States. I think some
of the issue with medical marijuana is that it bleeds
into recreational marijuana. Like if you remember, I don't know
(17:25):
how many years ago, five years ago, California made medical
marijuana legal, but they were you walked down Venice Beach
and you could get a prescription within five minutes and
have it filled, and there was no medical reason for it.
Five years ago, the d A came out and said
unequivocally that every state that passed a medical marijuana law,
(17:48):
medical marijuana or marijuana usage amongst teenagers goes down. Okay,
so it's a little bit. It's it's really just bad
information that's been given out to people. I don't even
have a problem with the fact that, you know, if
I go to an event this evening, like I went
to an event last night, everybody left that event a
fundraiser and went to the closest bar and had three
or four shots of an alcohol. Well, it was very funny.
(18:11):
I was talking to a doctor yesterday who said that
he's recommending to his wife that they had a conversation
last week that they're three daughters. He's going to say
to them, I think you ought to skip the alcohol
and just use marijuana, he said. And then the wife said,
why would you say that to our daughters? He said,
because when you look at what goes on with people
who use alcohol and lowers inhibitions, and it may stop
(18:33):
our daughters from premature pregnancy if they're not using alcohols. Also,
fewer calories don't get any weight from Well, you're hungry then,
so I guess you do. You don't necessarily have to
be hungry because there's different strains, and there's different strains
that have different chemics. Again, we got to go back
(18:53):
to this whole conversation about the other chemicals that are
in the marijuana plant. Cbn th, c A, cbd, CBDV.
There are several different cannabinoids that are in there that
if in the right composition, it won't make you go
out and divide your entire refrigerator, you know. So you know,
I think one of the things that we have to
do is now completely destigmatize the plant. You know, it's
(19:18):
gotten it's bad reputation, and we're afraid of euphoria. Why
are we afraid of euphoria when all the pharmaceuticals that
we saw provide some sort of euphoria. So why are
people addicted to vicon And it's not because they just
want to take the vic in, It's because they get
a buzz out of vic Why are people addicted woids
because they get a buzz out of it? And why
are people addicted to alcohol? Why does everybody go out
(19:38):
and try to get a tract? Why are we trying
to stop something that is something that human beings have
tried to reach and achieve since the dawn of man.
They try to find some of euphoria even through meditation.
Are we gonna ban meditation because it gives your euphoria?
What's the data on opioids versus sparrow WATA? There has
now been two studies that have come up that I've
(20:00):
seen in the last year that when we did a
show on it, you did a show on it before
it was vogue and everybody, again, I don't understand, and
I'm not knocking other people, but you know, you get
this one hour special on a cable channel that says
CBD c b D E c b D and the
whole world changes but that special should have said cannabinoids
(20:22):
all of them. You did a show about the fact
that there are science now that's starting to prove that
cannabinoids could be the exit drug for opioid addiction. Actually,
there's chemicals and cannabinoids that actually blocked the ability for
the brain to receive the entire amount of opioid. So
there's a there's a a addiction center in California right now.
(20:45):
It's been experimenting with actually using cannabinoids to stop people
from using opioids, and it's working. More questions after the break,
can you explain to the folks who don't know that
(21:07):
much about marijuana? And I've never gotten high, so I've
got I know, there's textbook answers. The modern strains of
marijuana have much higher amounts of th HC than historically
what humans were using, and that might actually be a
problem because some of the literature that we seem that
that I've been exposed to would indicate that more traditional
plants would balanced amounts of the th HC. There's psychoact
(21:29):
development and the CBD that has the medicinal benefit may
not cause the kinds of central nervous system impact, and
in factly, we may not need a th HC at all.
That way, we can have actual pill like a CBD
that has no psychoactive effect, and so it gives us
all the other benefits we have if it's gonna work
for you, you know, I think one of the things
that we've had people again here in America, I have
to understand that during the latter part of the fifties,
(21:51):
early parts of the sixties, and through the sixties, growers
in the United States try their best to grow all
of the non t a C out of the plant
and trying to see if they can increase the levels
of TC. Because people assume that since THHC is the
act of ingredient that is responsible for, you know, the euphoria,
the more of it you put in there, the bigger euphoria. Well,
(22:14):
I defy somebody to call you up right now and
tell me that they can tell the difference between a
six percent th C plant and a eleven percent or
a seventeen Yeah, does your high become more intense? Does
the euphoria become more intense? Some people say yes, some
(22:34):
people say no. Some people say that the higher level
of th HC really only is responsible for the duration
of the euphoria. More touch thing needs to be done.
But I'm gonna agree with you. I think that, you know,
one of the things that I'm trying to do myself
is that we do know that there was probably back
three thousand years ago, only about seven different strains of
(22:59):
the plant. Now, in the last thirty years, the US
and a couple of other places in the world have
led the charge and trying to cross breed a cross
breed a cross breed, across breed, crowd threes and come
up with all these silly named stupid you know, bubba bubba, bubbattle,
you know, ignorant names for products, just so that they
(23:22):
could differentiate something that they could sell. But they weren't
differentiating the plant in the way to make it any better.
They were just trying to make sure that they had
a different name that they could sell and sell you
something Bubba cush bubba this, bubba bah by that. If
you broke this all the way back down to the
original seven plants, you find that the THHC level in
those original seven plants was probably no greater than about seven.
(23:43):
And now we're looking at some people trying to grow
plants that have twenty nine plus percentage, you get high, yes,
And and I you know, now different than yourself as
a as a kid of the of the you know,
I graduated high school in seventy four, but you know,
as a you know, a kid of the late sixties
(24:05):
and the seventies, I consume some marijuana back then. And
I'm gonna tell you that I remember, back and you know,
high school, that I probably thought I would could never
be any higher than I was back then, using a
probably a marijuana plant that was no greater than seven
percent TC, and the intensity of my high was way more.
(24:30):
I remember, I'm looking back and think about some of
the stupid things I did back then. I would never
be that stupid right now with with that kind of high.
But I know that I was, I felt, or I
thought I felt, way higher than I feel today using
products that you know claim to be you know, we
now can extract and turn them into oils. And and
I have a product in in California and also available
(24:53):
in Oregon where I'm doing something different than anybody else
in the industry. Since we've now defined I'm both CBD
and t A C my THC products all have a
percentage of cb D in them. As a matter of fact,
I made formulations at our temper cent t A C CBD.
(25:13):
That's that's because CBD is a protective effect, as a
neuroprotective effect and also as a calming effect, takes away
a lot of the edge. So I actually formulated my
products tem per cent t C cbd t C sev
CBD fifty fifty sev t C CBD, and I have
(25:38):
one it's called And why did I do this? I
did this because how dare I the manufacturer believe that
I know the titration level you should have for you personally? Yes,
what do you do? What me use? I but I used.
I took those different those different levels, and I mix
and match them depending on what I feel. What do
you normally use a puff for each? And then it's
(26:00):
all well almost, but I utilize Well, I'm gonna say,
I could say I'm sitting here right now in my
pocket where we happen to be with nobody knows. I
have what's called a ten ninety So most of my daytime,
I'm using a tempercent t h C and a ninety
percent CBD. And that helps me keep my pain at
bay and is it a pain reliever, it's a pain disassociator,
(26:25):
So my pain's gone. I don't recognize it's there, don't
think about it. Sometimes later on in the day, when
I've had a hard day and I've been walking around
on on heart cement, I will increase the level of
TC tillout and then you know, early evening I'll go
up to a higher t h C because now I
want to relax. So I'm a nt that five percent
(26:47):
CBD helps me take the edge off the top. I
don't have parents. My hope is that you're the arduous
work you're doing will shed light for a lot of
Americans like me who don't know anything about the marijuana
culture and get us to appreciate this is a area
that has to be researched by docs, scientists and the
band that is in itself an American And yeah, not
(27:09):
we're not all going to agree about the recreational stuff.
You know, It's gonna take a lot to sway my
mind there. But for sure, if someone needs it for
what are the many reasons it's but historically have been
used when need to get to the root of it,
then let me just if I don't mind clothes about
some of that tease. At the open of the show,
you called me, uh in the middle of a health
crisis last year. Scared the heck out of me. You
(27:31):
had a problem that I knew as the doctor was
devastating that it's not the most common reason that people
have a stroke, which you were having one, but it's
the most dangerous. You were bleeding into your brain, you
were lifting weights, you felt the pop. How are you
doing now? How did that experience change you? You know?
Let me tell you. First off, let's let's go back.
Well you got two days ago. I went to see
(27:52):
my neurologists here and God blessed I. I am as
blessed as anybody could be on this planet. First off,
the type of struke I in the size of my
stroke normally kills fifth percent of people haven't and the
other fifth percent to survive it can take it any
work for a year to two years to regain faculties.
I blessed them and back to work for six months.
I saw my doctor, my neurologist, yesterday, and she said,
(28:14):
let me tell you something. I have never seen a
patient like you had. Did somebody not told me that
you had a stroke? If I didn't know that, there's
no way for me to tell that you had one
now other than me looking at your m R I
and seeing the fact that there's a stain there from
the blood. So I've recovered and I'm doing really well.
Now I'm gonna say and again, I may be the
end of one, but I really truly believe that my
(28:39):
extensive cannabinoid use and your protection that I was able
to garner from the extreme amount of CBD that I've
consumed for now seventeen years, is partly responsible for my recovery.
I am and I mean that. And I won't say
the name of the hospital, but I literally, on day five,
when I was laying on a gurney barely able to move,
(29:00):
started recon re introducing CBD into my daily regiment. As
matter fact, I increase my CBD in the hospital, And
be amazing, if I ever thought about that, I thought
she was lucky, because you know, you should. You could
have been a vegetative statement with it. But the stork
you had. What what if it? Actually? I mean, peace,
don't start doing this at home, but this is the
(29:22):
kind of thing I'm talking about. What what if it
It doesn't hurt you and could help you. That we
should be trying this. Why can't we research this? Why
can't we get going starts like yourn leadership with going
to Montell Williams, thank you, thank you for being with us.
Mons podcast is fantastic. It's called Let's Be Blunt. He
always is anyway, emotionally, blood lovingly blunt. To get here
lots more about him by checking out his podcast. God
(29:42):
bless you. Thank you so much, sir. Thanks listening. Thank you,
It was almost an epiphany. It changed my life. I
mean I stopped emotional now, but I mean stopped crying
every day on my show. I stopped crying every day
in the middle of the day because I was finally
starting to get some relief. And I will tell you
unequippably for everybody listening, I have not gone one day
(00:24):
since two thousand one without putting your cannabinoid in my body. Hi,
(00:46):
I'm Dr Oz and this is the Doctor Oz Podcast.
He's the man who knows no limits, from being one
of the most iconic daytime TV hosts to becoming one
of the highest profile trailblazers in the advocacy for medical marijuana.
Montell Williams has always been ahead of the times on
topics that matter most. Today, he's here opening up about
(01:07):
a health scare that almost changed his life forever and
what's next to his mission to empower people to take
control of their own health. I'm gonna get to this
health crisis in a second. But you're in the news
all over the news these days over medical marijuana. Huge article.
Congratulations about you're beating off the barbarians at the gates
of what you've tried to do building a brand for
(01:28):
yourself and just as close Mentel has a medical marijuana
a medical marijuana brand, but his passion and love of
of helping people learn about marijuana predates that. And I
actually met you when I was still doing the opera show.
You at the time had multiple school rosies you still have,
(01:48):
but that was readabilitating you. I remember seeing the pain
that you experienced when you try to do things without
medical marijuana, and the time you were even talking too
much about it. So let's start back then. What was
that like and what got you to realize that miracle
that Marioneer could play a role. And then I gotta ask,
why take the personal risk your Montell Williams, you could
(02:09):
have hidden, not told anybody, lived your life. People would
have been amazed that you got better, but there was
more to it. Crazy remember you know we talked about
it in one of your shows back in I was
really officially diagnosed in two thousand and one, diagnosed. You know,
my biggest symptom in first symptom was extreme neuropathic pain
(02:30):
in my feet and in my shins. And it was
so bad that at one point time back in two
thousand I was taken probably nine Viking m a day
nine nine. Oh, it was a time when you remember
a drug called taal wind, right. I mean that I
had doctor put me on twin and I was taking
three of those sometimes at a time, and I woke
(02:53):
up literally a couple of times feeling like I was
just drooling in a corner. And my doctor, who was
one and I think, one of the best doctors in
the country, literally who's at Harvard. I went to see
him and he said, dude, I know about you, and
I know what you're doing, and I'm done. I'm not
writing you any more scripts. I said, what, Because I
know you've been running around. I would, you know, come
on a montala So I could call any friend of
(03:14):
mine who got doctor behind the name and say, dude,
can you write me a script for you know, thirty
forty biking in? And of course they would write me
a script fort in I pulled into a city people
that already knew I came forward with the fact that
you know, I've been diagnosed with a mass and I
suffered from pain. So I could call a doctor in
a hotel. They would drop me off thirty biking in
and a heartbeat and homeboy was eating them. So my
(03:38):
doctor said, I'm done. I'm not writing you any more scripts,
and I'm going to reach out to every single one
of the people that I know they have written you
a script so far and tell them to stop. And
he said to me, I heard his exact words. I
heard that some people with MS like you have gotten
some relief from this marijuana stuff. I'm never gonna say
that I told you this. I'm never gonna tell anybody
(03:59):
that I've commended to you. But you need to figure
this out and learning for yourself. I don't have a
lot of research on it, but go get some research
and you have figured out and back in two thousand one,
I started researching cannabis. Back then, by the middle of
two thousand one, I recognize looking at the research from NIDA,
looking at the research that have been published by Dr
Ms Sulem out of Israel, that there was this chemical
(04:22):
in marijuana, something called c b D, and there's several
more that we don't talk about. Unfortunately, just because one
TV special, you know, talked about cb D, the whole
world jumped on it. But nobody's talking about CBN, CBG
t h c A, CBDV. There's so many over four
chemicals in the marijuana plant that, in an entourage effect,
(04:43):
can be responsible for the relief I was getting. But
back in two thousand one, before anybody ever said the
word CBD, I was seeking out cb D strong brands
or breeds of cannabinoids, especially in northern California, and I
was able to find a couple. I should over from
from actually using flower marijuana back in two thousand two
(05:06):
and was only consuming keith, which is really kind of
like the pollen, but the triclones, which is the most
you know, medicinally laden chemicals of the plant. And from
that point forth, maybe it didn't come overnight. Let mean,
let me tell you. When I first started using, I
was like, this isn't gonna work because my pain just
(05:27):
came right through. But then after about twenty days of
use of cannabis back in two thousand one, it was
almost an epiphany. It changed my life. I mean I
had stopped emotional now, but I mean I stopped crying
every day on my show, I stopped crying every day
(05:48):
in the middle of the day because I was finally
starting to get some relief. And I will tell you
unequivalently for everybody listening. I have not gone one day
since two thousand one about putting a cannabinoid in my body.
It's not always been t HC and maybe CBD and
a combination of turpines and other things, but I have
used it every single day. I think that's part of
(06:09):
the reason why, you know, And and yeah, of course
I may be just an end of one. I don't
think I am an end of one. I think that
if some doctors really were to research me and look
into what's going on, what our federal government claims is
happens with cannabinoids, is that there's some neural protection that
has been going on inside of my brain and my
(06:30):
nervous system from my continued use. And I'm at a
saturation point and was deliberately at a subigeration point. And
I think that's what's helped protect me. And when I
shipped it over it changed my life. So how was
the M this community dealt with the fact that you
would outside the system? Oh, let me tell you. You know,
I not only went outside the system using cannabis, but
(06:50):
I went outside the system when I first got diagnosed
because I had found out so many things about the
national MS society and some of the organizations that have
been raising money in people's name and sick people's names
to use the money for other things. So I was
never really and even up until about maybe four or
(07:10):
five years ago, I was disparaged by lots of the
national organizations when it comes to the MS because I
wouldn't jump aboard and throw my name out there and say,
go ahead and raise money and let these people buy
cars and buy planes and buy houses. That's not what
I'm about. I'm about making sure that if we're gonna
do something, that you're gonna do this with a patient
in mind. And I want to make sure if you
call yourself a foundation or a nonprofit, you better be
(07:34):
coughing up at least nine up what you raise to
go to the programs that you claim you're pre going
to them. Independent of all that, there was still a
closing off I think of the medical community to the
possibilities of this. If you can give us a brief
history lesson, I'll start you finish. Thousands of years ago,
tens of thousands of years ago, cannabis plants have to
(07:56):
develop way of protecting themselves, so they began influence seeing
very specific receptors in the brain, just the way opiates
effect endorphins systems, so you go running runners high. It's
not just endorphins, it's also a little bit of and
then cannabinoids and now canabinoid big words. Basically the receptors
for the marijana plant was widely used as medicine for
(08:16):
that reason. By the way, many of the medicines we
use aspen right comes from rule bark a lot of chemotherapies.
Periwinkle plant gives you right to a chemotherapy that we
use for leukemias. So there's a history of plants to
protecting themselves and humans learning how they predict themselves, and
then harvesting it to benefit us. So fast forward, it's
early part of the nineteen nine hundreds and it's being used.
(08:40):
There's how many tinctus are there in hundred with marijuana.
If you go, you can go up look up in
in online, go and pull up any newspaper from eighteen
and flip it back to the classifieds and you'll see
probably twenty tins a page that have some sort of
cannabis product in it. All. Also, i'll see allow of
(09:00):
them to have had cocaine in them, but at cocaine. Yeah, less,
but you'll see a lot of tensures that were sold
all across the country. So we believed in and we
knew that marijuana was a good, efficacious product. But the
problem was you couldn't be back then, you couldn't track
a seed, so across state lines there was an inability
(09:21):
for different states to be able to tax the product appropriately.
So marijuana was made illegal with a lot of people
don't understand by something called the Marijuana Tax Act of
seven and it was promoted and funded by William Roundolph
Hurst and DuPont. Why randolp Hurst was the paper magnate,
he was a furniture magnate. He was a guy trying
(09:41):
to chop down every big tree in America that he
could chop down. His competition was a weed that grows anywhere, hemp.
So he wanted to make sure he could corner the market,
so he backed Henry Anslinger and DuPont wanted to make
something called textiles, and up until this point, every sale,
every rope, every covered wagon, every sheet, even ore. You know,
(10:07):
the the uniforms that were worn in the Civil War,
both the North and the South had somebody in common.
They ran around in hemp uniforms. And you know, a
lot of people don't know even when we made marijuana
illegal in the namesake mayor of the City de la
Guardia commissioned to study and in his study he came
(10:29):
back and said, one of the most egregiously offensive things
that America has done is to make marijuana illegal because
of its medical advocactions. US. When you say the Tax
Act at thirty seven, how did that make it illegal?
They just puts a tax on it. No, it was
a tax act making it illegal to actually use it
across the transport, across their lines, and therefore it shut
(10:51):
down the ability to be able to sell it. And
then Henry Anslinger work for the next forty years untill
about nineties two sixty three to get marijuana band and
hemp band through a U N treaty. And so the
United States banned marijuana. And in that treaty that was
signed in six three, they allowed for testing and for
(11:15):
studies to be done at a country's university level. It
wasn't until under a lot of people don't know this.
And let me give you a little bit more education.
Back when first Bush was president, he started a compassionate
care program that allowed. Back then, they took twenty one
or twenty four patients into a program where the US government,
(11:36):
through a program at the University of Mississippi, for over
forty years, has been growing and distributing marijuana. Started with
twenty three patients. Now it's down to four because they
have passed away. And every month, every Wednesday, I think
(11:57):
it's the first Wednesday of every month, the University of
Mississippi shipped out across the country for the last forty
something years a canister of pre rolled marijuana cigarettes that
individuals were allowed to take on airplanes and cross state ones.
We find who who got these things? Oh, I know
one of the guys I I interviewed on my shows
IRV rosenfeldt IRV, I have one of those camps. Was
(12:17):
the problem they were treating, oh, multiple different problems. Back
the program was shut down and stopped because the second
that the first Bush Bush authorized program AIDS was one
of the first was detected then and so they got inundated.
Fifteen two people wanted to be a part of the program,
and they shut it down and said no more patients.
They have everything from from tumor diseases and bone diseases,
(12:41):
UH neurological diseases. All those twenty one three patients had
a myriad of different homes. They published this date anywhere. Now,
let me let's see if this is what's so criminally
and absurd about this. We have a government that says
we need more research. Yet every year for the last
the plus budgets that have been passed, there is a
(13:03):
budget line that has funded the University of Mississippi to
study and grow marijuana. Not only that, but we also
funded and studies in Israel. We studied back ten years ago,
the federal government gave Raphael Masuam, the doctor in Israel
who discovered the endocannabinoid system, discovered THHC and also discovered
(13:24):
cb D plus CBN and the majority of the cannabinoids
that are discovered today. We funded probably sixty million dollars
of research in Israel for this, and it's been published worldwide.
But the U. S. Government keeps claiming we don't have
enough data. How much more data do you need? First off,
anybody who's a congressman who passed the bill a budget
that have budget line in there to fund this should
(13:46):
go to jail then, because you've been lying to the
American public you live for the last forty years claiming
that you don't have been haven't there's not enough research
has been done, and you've been paying for the research,
which is crazy to me. Did you hear none of it?
You know? I I I should say it right here.
I'm gonna pull it up on my phone. But the
United States government owns the patent on THH C and CBD.
(14:09):
It's patent number looking up yourself, everybody out there, and
it's six six zero five or seven. And it's a
patent that in its own patent application under something that's
called you know, the space where they have to fill
out the abstract where they have to fill out what
it does. The U. S. Government claims unequivocally that it
knows that carnabinoids work for a myriad of the diseases
(14:31):
and has an antioxidative effect, especially when it comes to
some of the chronic illnesses we face today. This was
written over fourteen years ago. There's lots more will be
come back. So tim me back for a second. What
(14:52):
is it that drives the U. S. Government the ban
a substance that arguably has been used her medicinal benefits
from most of the human history. And I know that
in nineteen thirty, the a m A Was asked about
this twenty and thirty experts that part of the survey's
said it was rot it was wrong to ban medical
(15:15):
use of marijuana. So how do we get here? What
was Anton's purpose? You know, if you, if you you
really think about it again, go back to William Raddoy,
Herstan DuPont textiles and his fingers. But but his was
his goal. His goal was and I'm gonna get I
told you, I'm gonna get you this, so you'll be
able to hear it yourself. I could look it up
right now. But Anslinger stood on the steps of the
Capitol in the United in Washington, d C. And made
(15:37):
a statement that marijuana because he wanted to make sure
he could vilify this plan to get people to help
him ban it so that his friends could make money.
But you gotta recognize his whole objective was to make
us a race issue. So he stood on the capitol
steps and said that marijuana makes a black man want
to step on a white man's shadow, and white women
(15:58):
want to have sex with blacks. And hispanic and if
you look at Reefer madness, and some of the literature
that came out back then, they always had a villain
that was a black person hiding in the corner that
was using marijuana, or some some musician with black or
a smanic always crazed. And the truth of the matter is,
I'm gonna knock the medical community a little bit, but
(16:20):
you take a look at at Jerry actually drugs. You know,
in this country right now today we probably have majority
people over the age of seventy or on anywhere from
nine to ten medications. And why did Israel just call
it a jeriatric drug? Because if you give older people cannabis,
it can solve some of the issues that they are
(16:43):
reaching out to have solved by other chemicals. And you
know the amount of money that was spent over the
last seventy now hundred years, almost a hundred years on
other medications that were so much more expensive than I
remember the sativa marijuana play. An implant is a weed.
I can fly over a desert and drop it out
(17:04):
of an airplane, don't have to go back in the
water and go back four months later, and it's grown.
So this is something that doesn't really have to be
cultivated and prone the way we do it now anyway,
which is really kind of stupid, the way it's even
been been processed in the United States. I think some
of the issue with medical marijuana is that it bleeds
into recreational marijuana. Like if you remember, I don't know
(17:25):
how many years ago, five years ago, California made medical
marijuana legal, but they were you walked down Venice Beach
and you could get a prescription within five minutes and
have it filled, and there was no medical reason for it.
Five years ago, the d A came out and said
unequivocally that every state that passed a medical marijuana law,
(17:48):
medical marijuana or marijuana usage amongst teenagers goes down. Okay,
so it's a little bit. It's it's really just bad
information that's been given out to people. I don't even
have a problem with the fact that, you know, if
I go to an event this evening, like I went
to an event last night, everybody left that event a
fundraiser and went to the closest bar and had three
or four shots of an alcohol. Well, it was very funny.
(18:11):
I was talking to a doctor yesterday who said that
he's recommending to his wife that they had a conversation
last week that they're three daughters. He's going to say
to them, I think you ought to skip the alcohol
and just use marijuana, he said. And then the wife said,
why would you say that to our daughters? He said,
because when you look at what goes on with people
who use alcohol and lowers inhibitions, and it may stop
(18:33):
our daughters from premature pregnancy if they're not using alcohols. Also,
fewer calories don't get any weight from Well, you're hungry then,
so I guess you do. You don't necessarily have to
be hungry because there's different strains, and there's different strains
that have different chemics. Again, we got to go back
(18:53):
to this whole conversation about the other chemicals that are
in the marijuana plant. Cbn th, c A, cbd, CBDV.
There are several different cannabinoids that are in there that
if in the right composition, it won't make you go
out and divide your entire refrigerator, you know. So you know,
I think one of the things that we have to
do is now completely destigmatize the plant. You know, it's
(19:18):
gotten it's bad reputation, and we're afraid of euphoria. Why
are we afraid of euphoria when all the pharmaceuticals that
we saw provide some sort of euphoria. So why are
people addicted to vicon And it's not because they just
want to take the vic in, It's because they get
a buzz out of vic Why are people addicted woids
because they get a buzz out of it? And why
are people addicted to alcohol? Why does everybody go out
(19:38):
and try to get a tract? Why are we trying
to stop something that is something that human beings have
tried to reach and achieve since the dawn of man.
They try to find some of euphoria even through meditation.
Are we gonna ban meditation because it gives your euphoria?
What's the data on opioids versus sparrow WATA? There has
now been two studies that have come up that I've
(20:00):
seen in the last year that when we did a
show on it, you did a show on it before
it was vogue and everybody, again, I don't understand, and
I'm not knocking other people, but you know, you get
this one hour special on a cable channel that says
CBD c b D E c b D and the
whole world changes but that special should have said cannabinoids
(20:22):
all of them. You did a show about the fact
that there are science now that's starting to prove that
cannabinoids could be the exit drug for opioid addiction. Actually,
there's chemicals and cannabinoids that actually blocked the ability for
the brain to receive the entire amount of opioid. So
there's a there's a a addiction center in California right now.
(20:45):
It's been experimenting with actually using cannabinoids to stop people
from using opioids, and it's working. More questions after the break,
can you explain to the folks who don't know that
(21:07):
much about marijuana? And I've never gotten high, so I've
got I know, there's textbook answers. The modern strains of
marijuana have much higher amounts of th HC than historically
what humans were using, and that might actually be a
problem because some of the literature that we seem that
that I've been exposed to would indicate that more traditional
plants would balanced amounts of the th HC. There's psychoact
(21:29):
development and the CBD that has the medicinal benefit may
not cause the kinds of central nervous system impact, and
in factly, we may not need a th HC at all.
That way, we can have actual pill like a CBD
that has no psychoactive effect, and so it gives us
all the other benefits we have if it's gonna work
for you, you know, I think one of the things
that we've had people again here in America, I have
to understand that during the latter part of the fifties,
(21:51):
early parts of the sixties, and through the sixties, growers
in the United States try their best to grow all
of the non t a C out of the plant
and trying to see if they can increase the levels
of TC. Because people assume that since THHC is the
act of ingredient that is responsible for, you know, the euphoria,
the more of it you put in there, the bigger euphoria. Well,
(22:14):
I defy somebody to call you up right now and
tell me that they can tell the difference between a
six percent th C plant and a eleven percent or
a seventeen Yeah, does your high become more intense? Does
the euphoria become more intense? Some people say yes, some
(22:34):
people say no. Some people say that the higher level
of th HC really only is responsible for the duration
of the euphoria. More touch thing needs to be done.
But I'm gonna agree with you. I think that, you know,
one of the things that I'm trying to do myself
is that we do know that there was probably back
three thousand years ago, only about seven different strains of
(22:59):
the plant. Now, in the last thirty years, the US
and a couple of other places in the world have
led the charge and trying to cross breed a cross
breed a cross breed, across breed, crowd threes and come
up with all these silly named stupid you know, bubba bubba, bubbattle,
you know, ignorant names for products, just so that they
(23:22):
could differentiate something that they could sell. But they weren't
differentiating the plant in the way to make it any better.
They were just trying to make sure that they had
a different name that they could sell and sell you
something Bubba cush bubba this, bubba bah by that. If
you broke this all the way back down to the
original seven plants, you find that the THHC level in
those original seven plants was probably no greater than about seven.
(23:43):
And now we're looking at some people trying to grow
plants that have twenty nine plus percentage, you get high, yes,
And and I you know, now different than yourself as
a as a kid of the of the you know,
I graduated high school in seventy four, but you know,
as a you know, a kid of the late sixties
(24:05):
and the seventies, I consume some marijuana back then. And
I'm gonna tell you that I remember, back and you know,
high school, that I probably thought I would could never
be any higher than I was back then, using a
probably a marijuana plant that was no greater than seven
percent TC, and the intensity of my high was way more.
(24:30):
I remember, I'm looking back and think about some of
the stupid things I did back then. I would never
be that stupid right now with with that kind of high.
But I know that I was, I felt, or I
thought I felt, way higher than I feel today using
products that you know claim to be you know, we
now can extract and turn them into oils. And and
I have a product in in California and also available
(24:53):
in Oregon where I'm doing something different than anybody else
in the industry. Since we've now defined I'm both CBD
and t A C my THC products all have a
percentage of cb D in them. As a matter of fact,
I made formulations at our temper cent t A C CBD.
(25:13):
That's that's because CBD is a protective effect, as a
neuroprotective effect and also as a calming effect, takes away
a lot of the edge. So I actually formulated my
products tem per cent t C cbd t C sev
CBD fifty fifty sev t C CBD, and I have
(25:38):
one it's called And why did I do this? I
did this because how dare I the manufacturer believe that
I know the titration level you should have for you personally? Yes,
what do you do? What me use? I but I used.
I took those different those different levels, and I mix
and match them depending on what I feel. What do
you normally use a puff for each? And then it's
(26:00):
all well almost, but I utilize Well, I'm gonna say,
I could say I'm sitting here right now in my
pocket where we happen to be with nobody knows. I
have what's called a ten ninety So most of my daytime,
I'm using a tempercent t h C and a ninety
percent CBD. And that helps me keep my pain at
bay and is it a pain reliever, it's a pain disassociator,
(26:25):
So my pain's gone. I don't recognize it's there, don't
think about it. Sometimes later on in the day, when
I've had a hard day and I've been walking around
on on heart cement, I will increase the level of
TC tillout and then you know, early evening I'll go
up to a higher t h C because now I
want to relax. So I'm a nt that five percent
(26:47):
CBD helps me take the edge off the top. I
don't have parents. My hope is that you're the arduous
work you're doing will shed light for a lot of
Americans like me who don't know anything about the marijuana
culture and get us to appreciate this is a area
that has to be researched by docs, scientists and the
band that is in itself an American And yeah, not
(27:09):
we're not all going to agree about the recreational stuff.
You know, It's gonna take a lot to sway my
mind there. But for sure, if someone needs it for
what are the many reasons it's but historically have been
used when need to get to the root of it,
then let me just if I don't mind clothes about
some of that tease. At the open of the show,
you called me, uh in the middle of a health
crisis last year. Scared the heck out of me. You
(27:31):
had a problem that I knew as the doctor was
devastating that it's not the most common reason that people
have a stroke, which you were having one, but it's
the most dangerous. You were bleeding into your brain, you
were lifting weights, you felt the pop. How are you
doing now? How did that experience change you? You know?
Let me tell you. First off, let's let's go back.
Well you got two days ago. I went to see
(27:52):
my neurologists here and God blessed I. I am as
blessed as anybody could be on this planet. First off,
the type of struke I in the size of my
stroke normally kills fifth percent of people haven't and the
other fifth percent to survive it can take it any
work for a year to two years to regain faculties.
I blessed them and back to work for six months.
I saw my doctor, my neurologist, yesterday, and she said,
(28:14):
let me tell you something. I have never seen a
patient like you had. Did somebody not told me that
you had a stroke? If I didn't know that, there's
no way for me to tell that you had one
now other than me looking at your m R I
and seeing the fact that there's a stain there from
the blood. So I've recovered and I'm doing really well.
Now I'm gonna say and again, I may be the
end of one, but I really truly believe that my
(28:39):
extensive cannabinoid use and your protection that I was able
to garner from the extreme amount of CBD that I've
consumed for now seventeen years, is partly responsible for my recovery.
I am and I mean that. And I won't say
the name of the hospital, but I literally, on day five,
when I was laying on a gurney barely able to move,
(29:00):
started recon re introducing CBD into my daily regiment. As
matter fact, I increase my CBD in the hospital, And
be amazing, if I ever thought about that, I thought
she was lucky, because you know, you should. You could
have been a vegetative statement with it. But the stork
you had. What what if it? Actually? I mean, peace,
don't start doing this at home, but this is the
(29:22):
kind of thing I'm talking about. What what if it
It doesn't hurt you and could help you. That we
should be trying this. Why can't we research this? Why
can't we get going starts like yourn leadership with going
to Montell Williams, thank you, thank you for being with us.
Mons podcast is fantastic. It's called Let's Be Blunt. He
always is anyway, emotionally, blood lovingly blunt. To get here
lots more about him by checking out his podcast. God
(29:42):
bless you. Thank you so much, sir. Thanks listening. Thank you,
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