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<\/p>\n\n EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 Watch \u201cDr. Sanjay Gupta Reports: Weed 8: Women and Weed\u201d at 8 p.m. ET Sunday, April 19, on CNN and streaming on the CNN app on April 20.\n<\/p>\n
\n When I started filming the first \u201cWeed\u201d documentary back in 2012, I could not have predicted where this journey would take me \u2014 or the stories that would keep unfolding long after that initial exploration into the world of cannabis.\n <\/p>\n
\n At the time, I thought I was making a single self-contained film about a controversial plant and its place in modern medicine. What I didn\u2019t realize was that I was also beginning a long, evolving conversation about hope, healing and who gets to be taken seriously when talking about something as provocative as medical marijuana.\n <\/p>\n
\n Over the past year, I\u2019ve traveled across the country filming the eighth installment in this decade-plus-long series. This latest chapter focuses on women and weed \u2014 a natural progression, and one that felt overdue.\n <\/p>\n
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\n What I immediately learned was that cannabis has become a lifeline for countless women who feel unseen by conventional medicine. They are grandmothers trying to ease the side effects of cancer treatment, athletes managing endometriosis, teachers navigating the sleeplessness and mood swings of menopause. Everywhere I went, I heard versions of the same story: \u201cI tried everything else, and nothing really worked. Cannabis was the only thing that helped.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n As we learned, this is unfortunately a familiar pattern rooted in a long history. For as long as medicine has been practiced, women\u2019s health concerns have been minimized, misdiagnosed or dismissed.\n <\/p>\n
\n As a young doctor, I saw this with my own mother, and then again 20 years later with my wife. Conditions like autoimmune disease, postpartum depression and chronic pain syndromes were too often chalked up to stress or hysteria. Even now, women remain underrepresented in clinical trials, even though biological sex can dramatically affect how medications work or if they even work at all. This exclusion has left major gaps in our understanding of how best to treat half the population, and women have unquestionably suffered as a result.\n <\/p>\n
\n When it comes to menopause, the situation is particularly problematic. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) once promised relief, but warnings and controversies about potential risks left many women worried. Faced with few good options, it\u2019s no wonder so many are turning to cannabis. In the data, you see it clearly: Women now outpace men when it comes to cannabis use, especially among middle-age and older adults.\n <\/p>\n
\n In the stories I gathered over the past year, I heard something profound: a quiet revolt against being ignored.\n <\/p>\n
\n One of the most surprising places I found this revolution unfolding was Oklahoma. The state that once had some of the toughest drug laws in the country is now, somewhat affectionately, called \u201cTokelahoma.\u201d Since medical marijuana was legalized there, an entire industry has sprung up seemingly overnight \u2014 scrappy, local, women-focused and driven by a can-do ethos that could only happen in America\u2019s heartland.\n <\/p>\n
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\n I met women who had become unlikely entrepreneurs, building businesses powered by equal parts grit and compassion. There was April, a mother in Tulsa who pivoted from selling houses to dispensing cannabis-infused edibles that help women manage chronic pain. There was Bonnie, a young businesswoman in Tulsa growing strains that could help women with everything from sexual dysfunction to insomnia. And then Ebony, a trained chef who moved to Oklahoma to make edibles, is now a community doula and cannabis educator at the heart of a community of users called cannamoms.\n <\/p>\n
\n What struck me most was how mission-driven these women were. For them, cannabis wasn\u2019t about escaping reality; it was about reclaiming agency.\n <\/p>\n
\n These women are rewriting the narrative around cannabis \u2014 rooted in scientific data, which they are slowly starting to gather as well. They\u2019re creating products specifically for women, guided by empathy and experimentation rather than stigma or shame. It\u2019s a movement born not in laboratories or boardrooms but in kitchens, home gardens and local dispensaries.\n <\/p>\n
\n The larger conversation about medical marijuana also continues to shift at record speed. This year alone, several major medical organizations have called for a reevaluation of cannabis\u2019 classification as a Schedule I drug, arguing that the evidence for its medical use can no longer be ignored. There\u2019s promising research into cannabinoids for neurological conditions, chronic pain and even autoimmune diseases. Women are leading the way there, too. Dr. Staci Gruber, a pioneer in cannabis research at the Marijuana Investigations for Neuroscientific Discovery, known as MIND, in Massachusetts, is putting a spotlight on cannabis for endometriosis and symptoms related to menopause. Dr. Hilary Marusak, a developmental neuroscientist at Wayne State University in Detroit, is at the forefront of how cannabis affects the brain across every stage of life.\n <\/p>\n
\n But for every scientific breakthrough, I have found there\u2019s still a frustrating lag in policy \u2014 and a deeply human cost to that gap.\n <\/p>\n
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\n To that end, I can\u2019t talk about this subject without mentioning Charlotte Figi and her mother, Paige. Charlotte\u2019s story changed everything for me. She was just a little girl with a rare form of epilepsy \u2014 Dravet syndrome \u2014 who went from having hundreds of violent seizures a week to almost none, thanks to a high-CBD cannabis extract. Telling her story in my first \u201cWeed\u201d documentary opened the world\u2019s eyes to the real medical potential of cannabis and made the abstract heartbreakingly personal. Charlotte\u2019s life \u2014 and her death in 2020 \u2014 continues to guide my thinking about this plant and its power.\n <\/p>\n