During an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Myers,” Dr. Sanjay Gupta explained how he changed his mind on medicinal cannabis — he found research that was not funded by the U.S. Government.
“If you looked at all the studies, what you came to learn was that most of the studies were designed to look for harm as opposed to designed to look for benefit,” Gupta, the chief medical correspondent for CNN said. “…The whole system was sort of looking for that harm as opposed to saying this could be a legitimate medicine.”
Gupta explained that he once believed that people who were seeking medical cannabis were “malingering and just wanted to get high” but, after traveling the world and witnessing the research conducted on cannabis in other countries, he became a believer.
“But the truth is that, I think, for certain people not only does it work, it can be the only thing that works, and it would be immoral, perhaps even, to withhold that if it’s a therapy that can actually benefit people,” he said.
The doctor pointed to Arkansas, one of the four states in which voters passed medical cannabis referendum last week, as a sign that more people are beginning to embrace cannabis as a medicine.
“This is the only substance that has been, sort of, approved by the people,” Gupta said. “…I switched my mind on this after looking at the data and I just encourage other people to do the same thing.”