Seven years ago, Ed Rosenthal’s PSA numbers spiked and a biopsy confirmed prostate cancer. He declined the interventions his doctor laid out, remained under active surveillance and took CBD. A month ago, six biopsy cores, including samples from areas where cancer had previously been found, showed no cancer.
When Colorado voters legalized cannabis in 2014, I was attending a big party in Denver. I remarked that cannabis was a miracle drug because I had just been “cured” by the vote to legalize. I no longer needed a prescription to treat my latent glaucoma. As far as I was concerned, the problem seemed to disappear that evening, at least within what I consider the Four Seasons State. You know, in Colorado you can experience all four seasons in a single weekend.
Then two years later, California voters passed Prop 64, legalizing adult cannabis use. I could clearly see that my battle with latent glaucoma was coming to an end in my home state, too.
Then, about seven years ago, my physician noticed a spike in my PSA numbers, a blood test often used as an indicator of prostate cancer. A biopsy confirmed that the indicators were correct.
My doctor discussed different action plans, none of which appealed to me. Instead, I suggested trying CBD. My doctor was dubious, but because the cancer was considered slow-growing, he said I could try it and see how things were going in six months.
A little about my doctor: he is in his 40s, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and was familiar with cannabis and had heard about its medical uses, but had no experience with it medically.
Six months later, my PSA numbers had gone down. Subsequent tests continued to show the same trend.
About a month ago, my doctor performed another biopsy. He took six samples from different parts of my prostate, including areas where cancer had been identified before. None of those samples showed cancer. Much to his surprise, the cancer was no longer detectable in the tissue they sampled.
Over the years, my regimen was five or six capsules, each containing either 25 or 30 mg of CBD, twice a day, roughly 150 to 175 mg per dose and 300 to 350 mg daily. Some capsules also contained some CBG and other non-intoxicating cannabinoids. I also use a tremendous amount of cannabis daily, mostly by inhalation, so I was getting substantial amounts of THC as well.
I used no other medicines, special foods or special diets to treat the cancer. As far as I’m concerned, cannabis is nature’s miracle.
On my latest biopsy, the cancer was no longer detectable while I was using CBD. I can’t tell you that my experience proves cannabis cures cancer. But I can tell you what happened to me.
To me, that’s something worth investigating.
Anyone who wants to see my medical records for this is welcome to write me at info@edrosenthal.com.
What a negative biopsy does and doesn’t mean
Some context from High Times, because Rosenthal’s readers include people facing the same decision he faced.
What Rosenthal describes, monitoring a slow-growing prostate cancer rather than operating on it immediately, is a recognized clinical approach called active surveillance, and major urology guidelines recommend it as the preferred management option for low-risk prostate cancer. It typically involves regular PSA monitoring and repeat imaging or biopsies. Negative surveillance biopsies are not unusual. In a University of California, San Francisco cohort of 514 men with low-risk prostate cancer who underwent repeated biopsies during active surveillance, 37% had at least one biopsy in which no cancer was detected.
The title of that study asks whether the cancer vanishes or simply hides. A negative biopsy cannot fully answer the question, because a biopsy samples only part of the prostate; even multiple negative cores cannot establish with certainty that no cancer remains anywhere in the gland. Some men in the UCSF cohort who had a negative biopsy later had cancer detected again. The good news was real: men with negative biopsies were less likely to need treatment in the years that followed. But a negative biopsy is not the same as a cure, and the study did not evaluate cannabis or CBD.
Rosenthal’s most recent biopsy included six cores from different areas of the prostate, including the specific spots where cancer had previously been found, and none showed disease. That makes the negative findings particularly relevant to those previously positive areas, though they still can’t establish with certainty that no cancer remains elsewhere in the gland.
This is close to what Rosenthal himself says. His case is one case. It is also the kind of case that ought to be studied rather than dismissed.
Editor’s note: this is a personal account, not medical evidence. One person’s experience cannot establish that cannabis or CBD treats cancer. Cannabis and cannabinoids are not approved by the FDA as cancer treatments. Nothing in this article should be read as recommending cannabis or CBD in place of evidence-based cancer care. Anyone facing a cancer diagnosis should make treatment decisions with their physician. For what the research does and does not currently show, see our explainer on cannabis and cancer.
