[MUSIC] Hi everyone. Imagine that you lived a long time ago before the advent of modern medicine. No access to doctors. No access to medicines we know today. Your four-year- old child develops seizures. You're scared, you don't know what to do. But you hear that someone in a town nearby has a child with a similar problem. And you learn that an extract made from cannabis worked for them. So what do you do? Do you take a week to travel by foot to a big city to consult with some person in authority? Are you concerned about the lack of randomized placebo controlled trials? Are you worried about the fact that cannabis might impact developmentive memory systems? That ten years from now, your child might only be able to remember eight words on a shopping list instead of nine? Of course not. This is your child, your child who might die. So you go and you get some of the cannabis extract. And you give it to your child as soon as possible. I'm sure you can imagine similar scenarios for all kinds of ailments, burns, tetanus, tinnitus. Those are just a few examples of what older civilization's cultures did with cannabis. Let me give you a parallel example from modern times that most of you have heard about, the Charlotte Figi story publicized by Sanjay Gupta on CNN. This desperate family found that CBD extract from low THC flower produced dramatic improvements in their child's seizures. Their experience led to dozens of families moving to Colorado to get CBD. It also led to the development of CBD as a medication by GW Pharma and its subsequent approval six years later by the FDA. This is a concrete example of how our recent experience has parallels with history. An example of how anecdotal evidence made a big difference not just in the lives of the struggling family, but also ultimately led to a company developing a medicine consistent with our modern FDA framework. Now personally, I find the history of cannabis as a plant and a medicine to be fascinating. In addition to learning about what ancient cultures, civilizations thought of cannabis, I found that the history provides valuable perspective on how legalization has evolved over the last 20 years in the United States. And how cannabis is viewed by different groups in the United States and around the world. These perspectives are important because they will likely influence future regulation by federal agencies like the FDA. For the last 50 plus years, the federal government suppressed research into the potential medical uses of cannabis. Which means that there's very little modern scientific evidence. Cannabis was excluded from modern medicine and excluded from scientific study to ensure that it stayed a schedule one. For most people today who have nowhere else to turn, just like hundreds of years ago, anecdotal evidence is better than no evidence. So people have been getting information by talking to others about their experience with cannabis, all of which was facilitated by sharing information over the Internet. And as that anecdotal tide of information grew, more and more people advocated for access at the state level. And states passed laws, giving people compassion access, giving people the right to try it. As part of this module, you will take a look at the readings by Ethan Russo and the lectures. And see if you agree with me about the parallels of how we learned about the risk and benefits of cannabis a long time ago and how we've learned about it recently in our history. I hope you enjoy this module.