justice is possible. ♪ people are lighting up all over the country. they call it the green rush. marijuana has moved out of the back alleys and into the open. >> happy cannabis, y'all. >> in some states it's legal to grow, to sell, to smoke. and marijuana could be legalized in a city near you. so es to get, and many think so harmless. when the smoke clears, can marijuana bad for you? or could pot actually be good for you? >> marijuana is better than all those 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 small townhome, nestled in the mountains with a family who has never aloud tv cameras in before, and you're going to soon learn why. >> this is so pretty out here. >> yeah. >> they live in colorado, one of two states where it's legal to smoke pot medically and recreationally. but here it's also taboo to residents like paige and her husband matt. >> i'm sure it was mentioned to us by someone. hey, you should try this. and i thought no way. >> you thought that's 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 career-ender. >> i grew up in wisconsin in a well loving family, and i was educated that that's a drug. you don't 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 it's loco weed and it's going to make them crazy and they're going to rape your women. >> he got the anti-marijuana message out through news report,

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. >> yeah. >> marijuana then became illegal in 1937. and by 1970, it was schedule 1 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. >> it's okay, baby. >> this is their daughter charlotte having a seizure.

>> we just thought it was just one random 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 er. >> they did the million dollar workup, mri, eeg, spine 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 wasn't keeping up with her twin. >> they finally found an answer, and 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 isn't your 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 nothing. the ambulance is on its way. >> she survived. >> you're 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 i'm 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 onto 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. it's natural. >> and while he couldn't 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 don't know. >> there you are. >> and then charlotte's 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 doesn't 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? spokesperson: the volkswagen passat tdi clean diesel can go 795 highway miles on a single tank. huh... so you could drive from los angeles all the way philadelphia with just three stops for fuel. that's just a hop, skip, and a jump. try that in another midsize sedan. it's more of a hop... a skip... a jump... a leap... maybe a schlep... probably a hurdle... a little bit of a trek... avo: during the tdi clean diesel event, get a $1,000 fuel reward card and 0.9% apr for 60 months. oh, there's a prize, all right. [ male announcer ] inside every box of cheerios are those great-tasting little o's made from carefully selected oats that can help lower cholesterol. is it a superhero?

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is she allergic? >> i had resigned myself. i don't think she's going to survive this. >> we've seen her flatline in a hospital. we've said good-bye. >> you're 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 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 harvard-trained 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. >> here's how scientists think it might work. marijuana is made up of two ingredients, thc -- that's the psychoactive part that makes you high, and cbd, also called cannabidiol. they think it regulates electric activity to help quiet the activity in the brain that causes the 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 doesn't. they couldn't quite figure it out. it's 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 didn't want charlotte getting stoned. but also high in cbd to treat her seizures.

and that wouldn't be easy. dispensaries and growers, they make their money off strains that are high in thc. >> i'm joel. >> i'm josh. >> no one knows that better than the stanley brothers. their family business is pot. and if you look at these clean-cut guys and what you see surprises you, don't worry. they've heard it all before. >> when we were round the corner, 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 colorado's 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. we're allowed to grow six per patient. >> they have been growing something different. something they call revolutionary.

>> it's 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. >> there's 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 we've bred down the thc and bred up the cbd, and people said, you're crazy. you know, who is going to smoke that? >> so why grow it then? well, the stanleys also believed in cbd's potential to treat many diseases. and they had seen it change lives before. >> meet 19-year-old 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. >> that's why he is talking this way, almost speaking in hiccups, like he can't catch his breath. it's called myoclonus diaphragmatic flutter. >> 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 i'm done. like -- >> that's it? >> that's 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? >> yeah. i'm not zombified. i've had 16, 17 attacks today, and i'm still sitting up talking to you. my first attack on all these, i would be in the hospital. >> i'm a firm believer that marijuana has actually saved my son's life. >> chaz's 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 5-year-old little girl.

>> when charlotte's mother called my brother, joel, the brothers had a meeting and said tell us about this patient. she's 5 years old he said, and we said, no, we can't 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? we'll find that out later, but, first, learn more about what marijuana does to your kids' brain and yours as well. [ male announcer ] every day, your mouth is building up layer upon layer of bacteria, so destroy these layers with listerine®. its unique formula penetrates these layers deeper than any other mouthwash. for a cleaner, healthier mouth, #1 dentist recommended listerine®. power to your mouth™. [ chicken caws ] [ male announcer ] when your favorite food starts a fight, fight back fast with tums.

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that's what i want to talk about. if you're speaking some 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, y'all. >> for some it's a lifestyle. for others it's a lifeline. >> we're working with the lupus foundation and rheumatoid arthritis. >> 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. she's using high-tech imaging to see what happens in the brain when you smoke. >> when you first smoke, that you light up a spliff, a joint, a smoke, and receptors are 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 it's sort of an overall impact, right? >> so reward, pleasure, hunger. you have this overall feeling of wellbeing they say. that all sounds pretty good. >> it does sound pretty good. >> and it's 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, there's 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 hadn't been smoking pot. what you really see is this reduction in inhibitory function. >> welcome, doctor.

>> pretty spectacular. >> less inhibition. that's something that painter amir says helps him be more creative. >> a successful artist. his canvases sell for up to $25,000. >> it's 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 it's a delicate balance for him. >> it would make me apprehensive, maybe a little paranoid. just too analytical. >> you can get paranoid and have disorganized thinking.

you get disoriented. it can be uncomfortable. it can lead to panic attacks or anxiety attacks in people. >> how do you know when you've 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 university neuroscientist carl hart is investigating. >> exhale. >> research subjects in his lab smoke marijuana and then take a variety of cognitive tests. >> the effects will be disruption in memory, disruptions in inhibitory control. they will become slower at cognitive functioning, a wide range of things. these effects are temporary, but they're pretty pronounced, and they are clear. >> and it's slowly becoming clear to scientists what part of the brain is most affected. it's the prefrontal cortex.

>> it's 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 smoke 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 didn't have as

much trouble. >> i wouldn't pull her off the road, no. not yet. >> and that's something i witnessed firsthand driving around with 19-year-old chaz moore. the day that i spent with him, he had been smoking all day long. >> do you feel impaired at all? >> no, i don't. i feel normal. >> turns out when you test people who have a lot of experience with cannabis, you don't 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 can't answer is if there is a safe legal limit and people who use marijuana daily as a medicine should be able to drive. how impaired are they? >> what is more clear, though, 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. >> gruber's 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 there's underlying white matter connectivity differences. >> that's your concern, it sounds like, that those highways, those white matter highways are just more disrupted in people who start smoking early. >> that's what we see. >> perhaps not surprising given what we know about the young developing brain. >> that's a very delicate time in brain development, and that's not a good time to be taking any drugs. >> preliminary research shows that early onset smokers are slower at tasks, have lower iq's 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 what's being called a growing epidemic. and, later, charlotte's story. one of the youngest children to try marijuana in colorado. [ male announcer ] every day, your mouth is building up layer upon layer of bacteria, so destroy these layers with listerine®. its unique formula penetrates these layers deeper than any other mouthwash. for a cleaner, healthier mouth, #1 dentist recommended listerine®. power to your mouth™. #1 dentist recommended listerine®. hey there, i just got my bill, and i see that it includes my fico® credit score. yup, you get it free each month to help you avoid surprises with your credit. good. i hate surprises. surprise! at discover, we treat you like you'd treat you. get the it card and see your fico® credit score. ♪ every now and then i get a little bit hungry ♪ ♪ and there's nothing good around ♪

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and indicated earlier, we talked to the prime minister yesterday. sensitive detail from the

military was actual ly revealed. if we did not do it we are still searching. dehave detail from satellite image p.m. as i indicated earlier we are now working with other third parties on all the possible information that would help us in this search. >> the condition with this search area, i mean, will you search one by one? >> we are identified would areas.

both on the north over the land. the southern arc lead us right to the southern indian ocean. all that will be -- will be checked by the vessels. as i stated earlier, since yesterday, where we are not looking at the morning and southern corridor, we are looking at large chunks of land. 11 done reese. in a way, it gives us some certainty as to where we are looking at. but the areas are massive. that requires a lot of coordination with a lot -- according to a provide etch, many nations. here's what we have been doing since yesterday.

>> is have you requested for that information of one or two passengers for other national y nationalities? >> no. all of the same. >> entered a new phase of this investigation, have you link linked -- a crash to the south orator the north, do you make any association -- >> no, no, not at all. >> next question. >> how do you respond to that? >> well, anybody can say

anything. our focus -- that hasn't changed. >> when i see classified section 130, that means -- the measures, special measures. >> hi. i have two questions. the first is-re-creation, the state, with another set, and what findings might have pound out. also, when more do you know about the cargo that's on the plane? not just the baggage, passengers? >> first, we -- you are referring to whether we actually

found the flight profile. is that what you are saying? >> did you re-enact the -- >> yes, we did. not another 777. >> good morning, everybody. so glad to have your company. >> 6:00 on the east coast. this is "new day sunday." >> listening to the latest news conference. flight 370. we want to get you caught up on the latest breaking news. examining information taken from a plight simulator that was inside the home of the flight's captain. here's him there sitting in front of that machine there. >> yeah. the latest development is comes as u.s. intelligence officials tell cnn they are leading towards, quote, those inside of the cockpit as being responsible for the flight flight's disappearance. >> moments ago,