Release date: 2006
Director & Producer: Jed Riffe

Waiting to Inhale: Marijuana, Medicine and the Law pioneered the movement towards the legalization of marijuana as the first documentary in the US to document the struggle for medical marijuana use, following the movement from 2000 to 2006 and offering exclusive footage of the first major scientific study of medical cannabis to take place in over thirty years.

Waiting to Inhale examines the heated debate over marijuana and its use as medicine in the United States. At the time, twelve states have passed legislation to protect patients who used medical marijuana. Yet opponents claimed the medical argument was just a smokescreen for a different agenda– to legalize marijuana for recreation and profit.

The documentary takes viewers inside the lives of patients who have been forever changed by illness—and parents who lost their children to addiction. The film sheds new light on how this controversy developed, serving as a historical watershed for the debate over the medical use of drugs that are otherwise considered dangerous and lacking medical benefits.