Premiere Of “Waiting To Inhale,” The First Documentary On Marijuana, Medicine And The Law April 20, 2008

Award-winning film Waiting to Inhale, the first documentary on the movement to legalize marijuana as a medicine, premieres in the San Francisco Bay Area. Filmmaker Jed Riffe (Ishi, the Last Yahi, Who Owns the Past?) returns with his latest and most controversial feature length documentary yet.

In San Francisco at the Roxie Cinema, renowned oncologist and HIV/AIDS researcher Dr. Donald Abram, “San Francisco Chronicle” columnist Debra Saunders and MS Patient Yvonne Westbrook will discuss medicinal cannabis, an issue that brings conservatives and progressives together against the federal government’s war on patients. Filmmakers Jed Riffe and his colleagues will answer questions.

In Berkeley, filmmaker Jed Riffe will present the film on Earth Day at UC Berkeley where seriously ill students can lose their scholarships and student loans if arrested for using medicinal cannabis.

In Sonoma, filmmaker Jed Riffe and a panel of experts including: David R. Ford, author, “Marijuana: Not Guilty As Charged' & 'Good Medicine, Great Sex!”; Jeffrey Hagenrather, MD Cannabis Specialist; Lisa Gygax, Attorney; Aaron Smith, California Organizer, Marijuana Policy Project and the Sonoma Alliance For Medical Marijuana, Sebastopol CA will discuss why the town of Sonoma has virtually zoned medicinal cannabis dispensaries out of the city.

Waiting to Inhale explores the battle between patients, doctors, activists and the United States government over the legalization of medical cannabis. Providing exclusive access with individuals whose powerful stories have never made it to the front pages, the filmmaker takes us inside a world where critically ill patients are arrested at gunpoint for growing the only effective medicine for their pain.

The film presents exclusive access to the first major scientific study of medical cannabis to take place in over thirty years, currently in progress at the University of California, San Francisco. This groundbreaking research, led by Dr. Donald Abrams, tests the ability of cannabis to provide pain relief for patients with HIV and cancer and has added an exciting new dynamic to the debate over legalization.

Waiting to Inhale takes the viewer from underground pot clubs to the United States Supreme Court; from Israeli science labs to government approved cannabis gardens outside London. It features leading experts and researchers from all over the world on both sides of the controversy over the therapeutic potential of cannabis. In the United States, 12 states have passed laws with medical cannabis provisions. Yet use, cultivation and possession - for any reason - remain illegal under federal law. The film does not serve as propaganda for one opinion or another, but focuses instead on the real stories and struggles of people on opposite ends of this provocative spectrum. Above all, Waiting to Inhale opens our eyes to the unique world of individuals enmeshed in a conflict whose stakes are nothing short of life and death.

Official Website: http://www.waitingtoinhale.org/