So harmless. But when the smoke clears, is marijuana bad for you . Or could pot actually be good for you . Marijuana is better than all pose pills for you in terms of treating . Yeah. I travel the world for answers. What does marijuana do to you . What does it do to your kids . A special investigation, weed. Our journey begins here in this smalltown home nestled in the mountains with a family who has never allowed tv cameras in before and youre going to soon learn why. This is so pretty out here. Yeah. They live in colorado, one of two states where its legal to smoke pot legally and recreationally. But here its also taboo to residents to paige figi and her husband, matt. Im sure it was mentioned to us by someone. Hey, you should try this. And i thought no way. You thought thats fringe stuff . No way, not in a million years, no. But in this area, marijuana is far from fringe. And do you want island sweet skunk . Medical dispensaries are everywhere. People are smoking in private clubs. And public festivals. But none of this is for matt. He is a military man, and marijuana would be a careerender. I grew up in wisconsin in a wellloving family and i was educated that thats a drug. You dont do that. And i never did. But just decades ago, marijuana was a legitimate medication. Also called cannabis, prescribed by doctors and dispensed by pharmacies. Rolling. This is harry but that all changed in 1930. A relentless warfare. Henry anslinger. The United States first drug czar. For him, public enemy number one, you guessed it, marijuana. This guy saw how he could increase the budget of his department by having this mission, going after marijuana. You know, saying there is this drug that the mexican Migrant Workers are smoking, and its loco weed and its going the make them crazy and theyre going to rape your women. He got the antimarijuana message out through news reports. And then came this. Convinced that he is hopelessly and incurably insane. The film reefer madness, portraying the users of marijuana as unproductive, crazed. People are still afraid of what pot can do to them. In many ways to have defined our attitudes for 70 years. Marijuana then became illegal in 1937. And by 1970, it was a schedule i controlled substance. The government was saying it had no medicinal value, and had a high potential for abuse. All reasons why the figges stayed away from marijuana, until this. And this might be hard for some of you to watch. Its okay, baby. This is their daughter charlotte having a seizure. We just thought it was just one random fee febrile seizure . A fluke. A fluke made sense. After all charlotte, nicknamed charlie, was born perfectly healthy, a fraternal twin to sister chase. Charlie always had big, big smiles. Just happy kids. Easy. Easy. Very much so. So it was around three months you said that when you first noticed that charlie had a seizure. I was chaining her diaper, well putting a new diaper on from after the bath, and her eyes just started flickering. It led to the first of many trips to the e. R. They did the Million Dollar workup, mri, eeg, spinal tap. They did the workup and found nothing and sent us home. No abnormal blood test or scan. And developing normally too, talking, walking, the same day as her twin. Nothing was behind yet. By the time she was 2, though, the seizures had become constant, and started to take their toll on their once happy, joyful little girl. She started to really decline, cognitively. And she was slipping away. And she just wasnt keeping up with her twin. The figis finally found an answer. It was awful news. Gervais syndrome. It is severe intractable epilepsy. The seizures start during the first year of life and are unstoppable, difficult to control, and very damaging. Severe behavioral problems. Attention deficit and hyperactivity. The self injury, banging her head on the floor and pulling her hair out. Like a possessed child. This isnt your perfect, happy charlotte. It was a race against time. Many gervais kids die young, in early childhood. Charlotte was almost 3. For the next two years, the figges tried everything. Strange diets, acupuncture, and dozens of powerful drugs like valium, ativan, phenobarbital, but nothing seemed to help. Even worse, some of the medications nearly killed her. After one dose, she stops breathing. And after two doses, her heart will stop. Did you have to do cpr on her yourself . Yes. I remember when her heart stopped and i had her pulse and i lost her pulse. There was just nothing. The ambulance is on its way. She survived. Youre okay. Mommy is here. But that was fall of 2011. And charlotte was 5 years old. When things were at their worst, she just seizes all night. And the kids are sleeping in my room or next door. They can hear the seizure scream all night, 50 times a night. And chase would come in the morning and just, misses her twin. And just hug her and rub her head and say im so glad you survived through the night last night. Matt had been deployed to afghanistan. And the only thing he could do to help was start scouring the internet. And he stumbled on to this video of a child using marijuana. So how is everything going . Jamie had four days without a seizure. I was like wow, this having success on specifically gervais, this is interesting. Its natural. And while he couldnt ever imagine taking marijuana himself, he was now in the stunning position of recommending it for charlotte. I was like we need to do this. And i said i dont know. Charlotte. There you are. And then charlottes condition got worse. 300 seizures a week. Almost two every hour. She was not talking or moving. Basically, catatonic. As a last resort, doctors wanted to either prescribe a powerful veterinary drug used on epileptic dogs, or put charlotte in a medically induced coma so her brain and body could rest. For paige, those were not good options. But maybe, just maybe marijuana now was. But she was about to find out how hard that would be. This isnt go to the pharmacy and pick up your medicine. There was no protocol. When we come back, what will the figges do . And what would you do if this were your daughter . Does your makeup remover every kissproof,ff . Cryproof, stayproof look . Neutrogena® makeup remover does. It erases 99 of your most stubborn makeup with one towelette. Need any more proof than that . Neutrogena. Is she allergic . I had resigned myself. I dont think shes going to survive this. Weve seen her flatline in a hospital. Weve said goodbye. Youre listening to matt and paige figge describe their own daughter. What would you do if this were your child . Charlotte figge had an extreme form of epilepsy. Her body was so frail that any seizure could kill her. With no traditional treatment left to try and the clock ticking away, her parents decided to try marijuana. Charlotte was just 5 years old. I need a card in order to be able to get the cannabis from a pharmacy. Doctors have to prescribe it. You need two doctors in colorado to get the card for a juvenile or a child. It was hard. We were the first young child, and they said no. Everyone said no, no, no, no. Certainly her age played a role in my hesitance. Dr. Alan shackelford is a harvardtrained physician. He is also among a handful of doctors in colorado who give prescriptions for medical marijuana. From the moment charlotte entered his office, he knew she was in trouble. While he was just examining her, she had two seizures. She had failed everything. There were no more options for her. Everything had been tried, except cannabis. Heres how scientists think it might work. Marijuana is made up of two main ingredients, thc, thats the psychoactive part that makes you high. And cbd, also called cannabidiol. Its the cbd that modulates the electricity in brain to help quiet the activity in the brain that causes seizures. Dr. Julie holland is the editor of the pot book, a complete guide to cannabis. For a long time the work on cannabis and epilepsy was sort of inconclusive. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesnt. They couldnt quite figure it out. Its only when they really started separating thc from cbd that they saw definitively, yes, cbd seems to really stop seizures. So the figges needed to find something that was rare, a strain of marijuana that was low in thc. Of course, they didnt want charlotte getting stoned. But also high in cbd to treat her seizures. And that wouldnt be easy. Dispensaries and growers, they make their money off strains that are high in thc. Im joel. Im josh. No one knows that better than the stanley brothers. Their Family Business is pot. And if you look at these cleancut guys and what you see surprises you, dont worry. Theyve heard it all before. When we were round the corner theyre like, oh, wait a second, you know, did you finish high school . They all not only finished high school, but also college and in some cases graduate school. Now they are some of colorados biggest growers and dispensary owners. They produce up to 600 pounds of medical marijuana a year, and much of that marijuana is high in thc. But here on their remote farm at this undisclosed location in the mountains it takes a lot of plants. Were allowed to grow six per patient. They have been growing something different. Something they call revolutionary. Its greenhouse one. Greenhouse one, yes. Welcome to it. Welcome to paradise. Behind closed doors and under tight security, we enter what the stanleys call the garden of eden. Theres nothing like this in the world. This plant is 21 cbd and less than 1 thc. It took years of crossbreeding plants to get to this point. Instead of breeding up the thc weve bred down the thc and bred up the cbd, and people said, youre crazy. You know, who is going to smoke that . So why grow it then . Well, the stanleys also believed in cbds potential to treat many diseases. And they had seen it change lives before. I always have two meet 19yearold chaz moore. He uses many different strains of marijuana. Many of them high in cbd to treat his rare disorder of the diaphragm. My abs lock up. Thats why he is talking this way, almost speaking in hiccups, like he cant catch his breath. Its called myoclonus diaphragmatic flutter. This fluttering, its annoying but it becomes painful pretty quickly, i imagine. Yeah. After, like, 15, 20 minutes this is where i can start to really feel. He is about to show me how the marijuana works. He has been convulsing now for seven minutes. How quickly do you expect this to work . Within like the first five minutes. And im done. Like thats it . Thats it. It was actually less than a minute. Depending on the attack and the day, like, it will work within the first couple of hits. Hear how his voice is completely different. That attack lasted eight minutes, but some have last much longer and happen as often as 40 times a day. And like charlotte, he had tried so many things before. By 16, chaz was taking these powerful, addictive, potentially deadly narcotics and muscle relaxants daily, like valium and morphine. It would be safe to say that marijuana, what you have in your hand there, is better than all those pills for you in terms of treating whats going on . Yeah. Im not zombified. Ive had 16, 17 attacks today, and im still sitting up talking to you. My first attack on all these, i would be in the hospital. Im a Firm Believer that marijuana has actually saved my sons life. Chazs father, sean. His quality of life now is 1,000 times better than what it was when he was on the pharmaceuticals. A quality of life that paige figge desperately wanted for her daughter charlotte. But she still had one hurdle to cross, convincing dispensary owners like the stanleys to sell marijuana to a 5yearold little girl. When charlottes mother called my brother, joel, the brothers had a meeting and said tell us about this patient. Shes 5 years old he said, and we said, no, we cant do that. Why . It was the fear of the unknown. Charlotte was one of the youngest patients at the time wanting marijuana. Would it be too much for her . Or would it change her life forever . Well find that out later, but, first, learn more about what marijuana does to your kids brain and yours as well. If your purse is starting to look more like a tissue box. You may be muddling through allergies. Try zyrtec® for powerful allergy relief. And zyrtec® is different than claritin®. Because it starts working faster on the first day you take it. Zyrtec®. Muddle no more™. Thats what i want to talk about. If you smoking weed, make some noise april 20th, denver, colorado. We like weed, smoke weed tens of thousands from around the country and the world lighting up legally. Happy cannabis, yall. For some its a lifestyle. For others its a lifeline. Were working with the Lupus Foundation and rheumatoid arthritis. But for all of them, i wonder, what was it doing to their brains . Some of my patients call me pot doc. Your patients call you pot doc . Well, they never meet anyone who is as interested as hearing about their marijuana use as i am. Dr. Stacy gruber is serious about pot. I want you to name the color and not to read it. Okay. I met her in her labs in Mclean Hospital near boston. Shes using hightech imaging to see what happens in the brain when you smoke. When you first smoke, that you light up a joint, a spliff, a spoke, receptors throughout the brain respond. And these are areas of the brain responsible for things like pleasure, memory, learning, sensation, sense of time and space, coordination, movement, appetite and other drives shall we say. So its sort of an allover impact. So reward, pleasure, hunger. You have this overall feeling of well being, they say. That all sounds pretty good. It does sound pretty good. And its not just feeling good, but there is this phenomenon reported by many smokers over the years, especially famous artists, the ability to be more creative. When you feel that high, theres sort of a release of dopamine, and your brain has the ability now to perceive things slightly differently from the way you might have if you hadnt been smoking pot. What you really see is this reduction in inhibitory function. Welcome, doctor. Pretty spectacular. Less inhibition. Thats something that painter amir says helps him be more creative. A successful artist, his canv canvases sell for up to 25,000. Its my favorite way to work. Using marijuana . Yeah. He has been painting for 14 years, smoking for even longer. He says it makes him feel more relaxed, but most importantly for him, he says it makes him less critical of his own work. Stop worrying so much about this and that and just sort of looking and being as present as possible. Amir does caution that its a delicate balance for him. It would make me very apprehensive, as maybe a little paranoid. Just too analytical. You can get paranoid, have disorganized thinking, you can get disoriented. It can be uncomfortable. It can lead to panic attacks or anxiety attacks in people. How do you know when youve done too much . Simple tasks become very frustrating, like mixing paint, and then just sort of get into this state of, you know and why that happens is exactly what Columbia UniversityNeuroscientist Carl Hart is investigating. Exhale. Research subjects in his lab smoke marijuana and then take a variety of cognitive tests. The effects will be disturbance in memory, disruptions in inhib tour control. They will become slower at cognitive functioning, a wide range of things. This effects are temporary but they are pretty pronounced and they are clear. And its slowly becoming clear to scientists what part of the brain is most affected. Its the prefrontal cortex. Its very important for planning, thinking, coordinating your behaviors. There are tons of marijuana receptors in this region, and we think that marijuana, particularly in the novice, can disrupt all of those behaviors. An impairment that hart cautions could be dangerous. Especially when driving. You may prematurely hit your brakes. You may prematurely hit the gas pedal. A wide range of things. You may make a turn without looking more carefully. Look at this experiment done by cnn affiliate, kiro in washington state. Subjects smoked marijuana and then drove. One was a daily medical marijuana smoker and another an infrequent weekend smoker. Relaxed and buzzed. The more the novice user smoked, the more trouble behind the wheel. Watch yourself. Watch yourself. But interestingly, the habitual smoker didnt have as much trouble. I wouldnt pull her off the road, no. Not yet. And thats something i witnessed firsthand driving around with 19yearold chaz moore. The day that i spent with him, he had been smoking all day long. Do you feel impaired at all . No, i dont. I feel normal. Turns out when you test people who have a lot of experience with cannabis, you dont see many disruptions, but if you test people who have sort of limited history with cannabis, you can see some clear pronounced disruptions. Of course, no one thinks that driving when using marijuana is a good idea, but what scientists cant answer is if there is a safe legal limit and if people who use Marijuana Daily as a medicine should be able to drive. How impaired are they . What is more clear, though, is the effect of marijuana on the young brain. What we see is a very big difference in people who begin to smoke prior to the age of 16 and those who smoke after age 16. What we call early versus later onset. Grubers brain scans show the white matter, those are the highways that help the brain communicate from one point to another are impaired in those who start smoking early. Maybe that theres underlying white matter connectivity differences. Thats your concern, it sounds like, that those highways, those white matter highways are just more disrupted in people who start smoking early. Thats what we see. Perhaps not surprising given what we know about the young developing brain. Thats a very delicate time in brain development, and thats not a good time to be taking any drugs. Preliminary Research Shows that early onset smokers are slower at tasks, have lower iqs later in life, higher risk of strokes, and increased incidents of psychotic disorders. While these studies are not conclusive, some scientists are still concerned because in 2012 35 of High School Seniors lit up, and that could mean a generation of kids with damaged brains. Many fear Something Else. I never really told myself i needed help. A generation of marijuana addicts. When we come back, the truth and the Science Behind whats being called a growing epidemic. , later, charlottes story, one of the first and youngest children to try marijuana in colorado. One of those people who needs to keep busy. If shes not working in her garden, shes probably on one of her long walks with bailey. She was recently diagnosed with a heart condition. I know shes okay, but it concerned me shes alone so often. So i encouraged her to get a medical alert button. Philips lifeline offers the best options to keep her doing the things she loves in the home she loves. If she ever falls, or needs help, i know we can get to her quickly, and with her con