Mexican-Canadian journalist Oswaldo Perez Cabrera met the Canadian activist Rick Simpson in Zagreb, Croatia for a talk about hemp oil. Rick claims the oil cures cancer, MS and other illnesses. There are dozens of cases that prove his claims; from terminal cancer cases with days to live to MS patients that now can function without symptoms. The oil also works wonders for diabetes, inflammation, lacerations, PAIN and other conditions. Check out the interview and his strong opinions about the medical system, the Canadian government, and the fraud the pharmaceuticals are pulling on us. Videographer and transcript Raechel Norrgard.
Hi this is Oswaldo. We’re here with Canadian Rick Simpson, creator or one of the people that rediscovered the benefits and healing properties of hemp oil. So we’re here in Zagreb, Croatia, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about the history of the oil. How did you get the idea to start making the oil?
Well, what happened is I suffered a severe head injury in 1997 and it left me with what they call post-concussion syndrome and in my case I had this extremely loud noise ringing in the head 24 hours a day. It drives your blood pressure up, the head injury affected my balance. There were many problems associated with it. So they put me immediately on the pills, you know the doctors “take this pill, take that pill”. So about a year after the injury, I wasn’t getting any better, and I watched an episode of the nature of things with Dr. David Susuki. It was called “Reefer Madness 2”. When I watched it, here was all these patients smoking cannabis and having very dramatic results on their medical problems (although I don’t look at smoking cannabis as being the answer now; the answer is in the extracts. It’s the most medicinal way to use it). After seeing this I went out, and I mean I had smoked cannabis in the past but I never looked at is like a medicine. It was just something you did in the evening to relax.
You were in Nova Scotia?
Yeah. So this is the way I’d always looked at it. But then once I tried cannabis and I realized it works better than anything the doctors are giving me, so I went to all the doctors I was going to (and I was going to several) and I kept asking them all for a prescription so I could legally use cannabis under the medical marihuana program.
You were smoking the marihuana at that time?
I was smoking it to get relief but see the thing is with my condition is I couldn’t sleep, and nothing that the medical system gave me would knock me out. I mean they had me on some horribly strong tranquilizer but still, the noise, you just couldn’t sleep. So what was happening is I would pass out for an hour, hour and a half from exhaustion and then the noise would bring you back, you know. You’re awake again. So there was no rest to be found for years. So in desperation, I mean, by 1999 I was becoming somewhat suicidal from the effects of these medications that the doctors had supplied because they’re well-known to do this. But rather than commit suicide I thought “you’ve gotta do something for yourself” so, I thought well what would happen if you took this plant and you washed the medicinal (I mean, anybody who grows cannabis knows about the resins and how sticky they are, but these resins contain the healing cannabinoids, the medicinal part of this plant)… so I thought if you took a solvent and just washed the medicinal part of the plant off, and then filtered it and boiled the solvent off, what would that leave you with? So I went to my doctors office and I asked him this question. I said “What would you think if I started ingesting oils produced from the cannabis plant as opposed to smoking it?” But when I said that the doctor got a really strange look on his face, he said “Well, this would be a much more medicinal way to use it.” but he still wouldn’t give me a prescription. So, at that time I made the first medicine but I’m almost ashamed to say that it sat there for almost three years before I was put in the position where I had to use it. So in late 2001 I was called into my doctors office. They said that they had tried everything they had at their disposal. Nothing could help me. It was just like “You’re on your own.” so again I asked them for a prescription. They wouldn’t give it to me. I even contacted the pain management center in Halifax because I had heard that you could get a prescription through them but when I called them there was a 21 month waiting period just to get in to see them, so I was left high and dry. So I went home and I started these small doses about an hour before bed and I started upping the dosage. What happens is, you take the oil and usually within 45 minutes to an hour you just get this sleepy feeling. The more oil I took, the more rest I got. So in a short time, within a month or so, I worked myself up to taking about 1/4 of a gram to 1/3 of a gram at night before bed, and the effects were just amazing. I had had arthritis in my knees for quite a few years, all of a sudden that disappeared. I started losing weight. I lost about 30 – 40 pounds very quickly, but once my weight got down to the right weight for my size and height then it just stopped. The ringing in my head, it didn’t take the ringing away, but it made it so I could deal with it. The noise takes over your life, but the oil made it so that I could deal with it. It brought my blood pressure under control. It helped me in so many ways, it was just amazing. And then in late 2002 I went back to the doctor about these three areas I had: one here by my eye on the right side of my nose, one on my cheek, and one on my chest. I’d had these lesions since the 90s and they hadn’t healed so I strongly suspected skin cancer. So I went to the doctor and they were all concerned about this one close to my eye so they made arrangements for me to go in and have it removed, and then I was to go in and have the other two done at a later date; so I went in and I had this cancer removed.
It was about a week later when I was examining the area where they had operated (of course it was infected because that’s pretty common today in hospitals unfortunately), but it was just at that moment when I was looking at it in the mirror I thought this study I had heard on the local radio back in 1974/75 stated that thc, the active ingredient in marihuana had been found to kill cancer cells. By that time I had already been ingesting the oil for quite some time so I thought this can’t be true because if it actually killed cancer cells, why do I still have cancer? But the thing was I wasn’t ingesting enough. If I had taken a 60 gram treatment over a 90 day period, the skin cancers probably would have just dried up and fell off. That’s what they do. But I just wasn’t ingesting the amount of oil required. I hate to say it, but I almost didn’t try it because I thought surely to God if there was actually a cure for cancer or a sensible treatment for cancer they’d be using it. I had faith in the medical system, but there was still this lingering doubt in my mind so I just thought well I’ll go down, I’ll take a little bit of that oil and put it on this cancer, put a bandage on, and do the same for the one on my chest. When you have basal cell carcinoma, it feels like in the affected area like you have splinters, and it’s usually puffed up or bleeding a bit. The minute I put that extract on the lesions, that splinter feeling immediately disappeared. It just stopped entirely. That was kind of shocking. I left the bandages in place for 4 days, I never felt a thing. There was no feeling that anything was really happening. So after 4 days I went down to the bathroom, and I remember I was looking in the mirror when I peeled this one off and I remember thinking “oh my god”, the whole thing had completely healed. It was just pink skin. And the same thing on my chest. So I started telling friends that I knew well “I think this extract cured my skin cancer.” and everybody just thought I was crazy. Nobody believed it. It was 7 weeks after that operation they had performed, and that cancer came roaring right back. So I put the oil on a bandage, same thing, left it for 4 days. That was about 13 years ago now, I’ve never had to retreat these areas.
Who was the second person that tried this?
My mother. She had weeping psoriasis on her lower leg, she’d had that trouble for quite some time. The oil healed that right up. And then I started passing it out, to many people with skin conditions at first and then it evolved. I was ingesting the oil and I knew it was harmless, so I started giving it to people with terminal cancers, arthritis, all kinds of disorders. It just worked miracles. But the funniest thing was, after that cancer had come back around my nose and I had treated it, I went down to my doctors office to get a copy of the pathology report because they’d taken a sample when they did the operation. Sure enough there it was in black and white “basal cell carcinoma” totally excized. In 7 weeks it was back so they didn’t get it all, but the medical system likes to think they do. So I told the receptionist who happened to be the doctors wife that I’d like to come back and have a talk with the doctor in the evening about something I’ve been working on. And she asks “What’s this about?”. I said “that cancer they removed came right back so I treated it and the other two areas with hemp oil” and the minute I said hemp oil the woman just crunched and said “The doctor will not go there. The doctor will not prescribe this!” Literally screaming at me, and I’m standing in the waiting room and there’s 5 or 6 other people there listening to all this and I’m thinking “Are these people crazy?”. So I get out to my vehicle and started home and got thinking that if I was a doctor and one of my patients who was suffering with cancer had cured their cancer with something natural, I would want to know about it.
What’s the most dramatic case that you’ve seen the oil cure?
There’s been so many of them. I’ve seen this oil turn AIDS right around, multiple sclerosis, terminal cancers definitely. I’ve had many patients, if they get the right oil. It really does have all the healing powers that I’ve been describing for the last 13 years. I have seen patients, one patient in particular was in the hospital and given 24 hours to live by the doctors. His son took a dose of the oil in, and the next day he left the hospital. He was dying with lung cancer, had taken chemo. He went home, and in no time… he was taking around 30 pills a day, and in no time his son took him off all the pills. He was also a bad diabetic for 35 years. Within 6 weeks he no longer needed insulin, and at the end of 90 days his lung cancer was gone. Things like that are pretty damn dramatic.
So you’ve been trying to show this to doctors and institutions. Why do you think they don’t respond to the proof because there is walking proof that this works?
They don’t want us to have the ability to heal ourselves. That’s really what it’s about. Once you understand the healing power of these extracts, for the most part you don’t need their system. Their system becomes obsolete. Allopathic medicine is idiotic. Medicine from chemicals and poison is supposed to heal you? The very thought of what’s going on today in the medical system, when you look at chemotherapy, radiation. Cancer-causing treatments to treat your cancer. Who’s the lunatic here? The whole system today is all based on profits. It’s all about money. What the medical system for the most part is so afraid of is if we all have the right to have a jar of that oil in our own homes and used it properly for medicinal purposes, there wouldn’t be much need for doctors. We’d still need our surgeons if we get into an accident, break a leg, something like that. That side of medicine is okay. But the other side of medicine, when you’re looking at all these pill pushers and oncologists, that’s the side of medicine that does not make any sense at all. There has to be a lot of changes made and they have to be made rapidly, but what people have to first realize: it is our natural god-given right as human beings to use this plant. Nobody ever had the right to outlaw it. Show me the man that can walk up in my face and tell me that I do not have the right to heal my cancer using a plant. A plant that has been used for 5000 years in medicine. It’s legendary. Some of the greatest healers in history used it, and I believe that holds true with Jesus himself in the holy annointing oil because now it’s been proven that it was cannablossom as one of the major ingredients. So the holy annointing oil is full of cannabinoids. That’s what was doing most of the healing. It’s endless. The scam they have pulled on the public, the lies and deceptions spread. This is what I have to tell everyone: everything that you’ve ever been told about cannabis is just lies. Look at the subjecct for yourself, do a simple study into it. You’ll find back in the 1800s companies like EI Lily, Parke-Davis, Squibb, the same companies we have today. Guess what they were using back then? They were putting cannabis as a main ingredient in practically all their medications. They were selling it to the public as tinctures watered down with alcohol. But none of these companies ever sold the real high-quality essential oil to the public. They always controlled the potency. In the 1880s EI Lily was selling hash pills as painkillers. I have no doubt they worked. There are strains of this plant that make the greatest painkiller on the planet. Far better than anything like hydromorphine. If you have this type of oil, basically you don’t even feel pain. I think somebody could shoot you and you wouldn’t feel it. It’s amazing, the painkilling abilities.
It’s obvious for you it’s a human right, the right to cultivate your own medicine. You’ve been through some repression in Canada, you’ve been raided, you were charged. What do you think the solution could be? What’s the next step that the people should take so that government can grant them that human right?
What I’ve been advising people to do, especially in Canada (that’s my homeland), I’ve told these people that “oh look I’ve got this medical card which allows me to use cannabis”. I say take that card, send it back to the minister of health and tell ’em to shove it where the sun don’t shine. They had no right to control this and they know it. The Canadian government outlawed Indian Hemp in 1923. It was in widespread use as medicine. The whole thing is absurd what was done here. In the US, 1937 Tax Act, and these clowns like Randalf Herst and Harry Anslinger with all their lies and propaganda, and then Hollywood coming out with Reefer Madness and a whole slew of other garbage movies about this subject. They just brainwashed everyone. And in those days our access to information was really limited, so there was no internet. This is the only reason it’s happening today; if it wasn’t for the internet we’d never be able to get the truth out. When I do a lecture, I always tell the people the same thing: I don’t want you to believe a word I am saying. I want you to go out, get your hands on 30 grams of good bud material from good medicinal strains of cannabis (preferably indica), produce these extracts following the instructions on my website www.phoenixtears.ca, make the extracts (usually around 30 grams will give you 3-4 grams of high grade oil), find somebody with a diabetic ulcer, skin cancer, third degree burn, psoriasis, anything of that nature, put the oil on, put a bandage on, change it every 3 days, add fresh oil, watch what happens. Prove it to yourself. It’s so simple and anybody can make this medicine. If I had the ingredients all sitting in front of me on a table, everything I needed to do it, you could blindfold me and I’d still be able to make it. There’s nothing to it.
So you recommend people to start growing their own?
Yes, grow your own. Your government has no right to tell you you can’t grow your own and they have no right to regulate this. They’re just trying to use this as a cash cow to make a ton of money, and I think we’ve all had enough of the pharmaceutical industry and the corruption of our governments.
Speaking a little bit about the oil, does it get you high?
It depends. We’re all different, we all have different tolerances. I’ve had patients that took the full 60 gram treatment and worked their dosage up slowly as I instructed, and they said that they didn’t even get high, or they felt that they didn’t. But other people with a low tolerance, yes it will make you high. But what is high? If you’re on a sativa oil (which I recommend people don’t use), the high from that can be very energizing and I don’t want to see terminal cancer patients energized. So when it comes to the internal use of these oils, the heavy, sedative, sleepy indica strains are the name of the game. What I tell people is, so many people are afraid, they’ll try to fight that sleepy feeling. Don’t fight it. The oil is telling you to go lay down and rest. We all know, and even the doctors will tell you, sleep and rest are part of the healing process. This is what the indicas promote. So relax with it. That’s what I tell people. Relax and enjoy the ride. Basically, as you build up your tolerance, usually within 4 weeks, maybe 5 at the most, most people can get themselves up to the point where they can ingest 1/3 of a gram every 8 hours. Once you build that tolerance, and you’re not changing strains or different types of oils, use the same type of oil, you’ll build a tolerance, take the oil, and a lot of these terminal cancer patients are going back to work after a month and others that they’re working with don’t even know they’re taking it. I always tell people to be aware of the fact for the first 2-3 weeks you’ll be doing a lot of sleeping because that’s what it does. I tell people not to drive their cars in the beginning, until they get the feel of the medicine. But once you get the feel of it, it’s perfectly safe to drive your motor vehicle because this oil does not impair your motor skills. More lies we’ve been told.
How many people do you think you’ve shared the oil with?
Back in Canada, up until 2009, it would be up over 5000 people. It was not unusual to look out in my yard and see 5 or 6 cars sitting there. It was kind of crazy what was going on. Then the website, it’s been up since 2004, that has spread the word a great deal, and then when we brought out “Run for the Cure”, the documentary produced by Christian Laurette, that’s been viewed by hundreds of millions worldwide. Now, many people are aware of it. I did an interview once in the UK and I think this announcer said it the best, he said “Rick, you lit 10,000 fires all across this world. Those fires are going to continue to grow and they’re going to consume all the corruption that stands in their path.” and that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. Poor people can’t afford to play these stupid pharmaceutical games anymore. I’m not going to go out and give EI Lily or Parke-Davis tens of thousand of dollars for a damn treatment that I can grow right out in my backyard. It just makes sense.
You spread the word all around Europe now. How did you get to Europe in the first place?
After going through the legal system in Canada… they made me a criminal… the way they did it, the crown prosecutor tampered with the jury to see that I was convicted. Unbelievable but it’s true. As a matter of fact, that same crown prosecutor was found doing the same thing 2 or 3 years later. Another case involving the oil. He went in, was in the jury room, the police were lying on the stand, and when this was all brought to the judges attention, they dismissed the case. But the crown prosecutor is still doing the same job. He should have been disbarred immediately. He should have been disbarred over my case. The whole legal system is fixed. When you go into the legal system like I did, I had 10 patients ready to testify and 6 doctors. Two of those patients had been cured of terminal cancer, they wouldn’t let them on the stand. They knew this, and they wouldn’t let them on the stand. I had a box full of scientific evidence. Same thing. Can’t be introduced. I go through all this rig-a-ma-roll, and in the end at my sentencing the judge said “Under different circumstances, Mr. Simpson would be winning awards for his work. But this is a court of law and we don’t give out awards here.” and then he said “In my 34 years in the legal system, I’ve never seen a case like this. There was no criminal intent.” So what was I doing wrapped up in their stupid court system? And then the same judge who would not allow the patients on the stand and wouldn’t allow the scientific evidence to be introduced, he came right out and stated “the scientific evidence does exist to back up everything Mr. Simpson is saying, and he also has a large body of evidence from the patients that he has supplied.” So there it was. We had the medicine of our dreams, but the court case went on like it meant nothing. I could have gone to jail for 12 years, but it’s up to the judges discretion. What they did was they gave me a $2000 fine and a gun restriction. And it wasn’t because any guns were involved (well yes, there were, the RCMP were waving them all over the place) but there were no guns involved on my side. But if you’re convicted of trafficking, that comes with an automatic gun restriction. If you look up the definition of trafficking in the dictionary it says “The exchange of goods for monetary gain”. I didn’t gain anything, so how was I trafficking? But under their “legal definition” that’s trafficking. Our whole system is absurd. In reality, it’s the big money interests that stand in the shadows controlling all our governments. The governments in turn control the policing, the legal systems, the medical systems, they control all of this. This is why I don’t particularly blame the doctors for this situation because they’re just following government regulations, but this prohibits them from treating people in a rational way. I think that all doctors should unite and start following their own Hippocratic oath. If they do that, then they must use harmless medications like the extract of the cannabis plant can provide because that does follow the Hippocratic oath, and as far as I’m concerned the Hippocratic oath is the basis of medicine. Right in that oath it first states “Do no harm” and it also states “As a doctor, I shall not administer poisons.”. It just makes sense.
And then you ended up in Europe? Amsterdam, was it?
Yeah I went to Amsterdam for the Cannabis Cup. After the sentencing in January 2008, for almost two years they left me alone. There were plants growing in my backyard in 2009, the police didn’t come near it that year for some reason… but I was at the Cannabis Cup, and I think by that time I was making so much noise and gaining such a following that I was sure that it was becoming a thorn in the government’s backside. So I think the government sent the RCMP in there, and I believe the idea was that since I’d been through the legal system and seen the corruption, I knew it was pointless to fight it. I think they just thought “Well, if we do this, that’ll keep him out of Canada. That’ll shut him up.” It did keep me out of Canada but it didn’t shut me up because I just continued to go from country to country and kept making noise and telling the world the truth about this. Somebody had to do it. It really disgusted me. This is the reason why I am no longer proud to call myself a Canadian. My father fought and was badly wounded for that country. I used to think that Canada meant something. When I find out in the end that it’s a corporation run by a bunch of thieves and criminals. This is nothing to be proud of and I think the Canadian people should become aware of that.
So now you’re here in Croatia, in Zagreb. What are your plans now? Want to give the website?
If you go on the internet you’ll see all these scam artists out there: ricksimpson.org, etc. They’re all producing the RSO. The only website I am affiliated with is www.phoenixtears.ca and the ca stands for Canada. I have two books available on this subject. They’re both available as e-books, and my first book, Phoenix Tears: The Rick Simpson Story, is also available in paperback. This is the only funding I have to carry on this crusade, so I’d appreciate it if people would buy my book. I think most people seem to enjoy reading it. There’s the Rick Simpson cancer foundation, the Phoenix Tears foundation, I am not affiliated with any of these people. I do have my own facebook page and I have my own youtube channel, but beyond that, that’s it.
You don’t really sell the oil.
No, I did this so that people could gain the knowledge to produce their own oil. I knew I couldn’t produce oil for everybody on this planet, but it’s so simple that I thought most people could do it. And they can. I just supply the information they need to heal themselves. This wasn’t about money. It wasn’t about gaining fame or fortune. I wanted the oil to become well-known, not me. But this all transpired because of Jack Herer, because he attached my name to the oil. One night Jack and I were talking and he says something about the “Rick Simpson Oil”, and I said “Jack, why are you connecting my name to this oil? It’s hemp oil.” and Jack said “Aren’t you Rick Simpson?” And you can’t argue with that. So for some reason, Rick Simpson Oil, or RSO, caught on and spread from there.
So what are your plans now?
I see so many people in Canada and North America, well, worldwide. This industry is just exploding, but the trouble is that it seems to me that everyone is going in the wrong direction. I think the first thing we should do is bring these extracts up to their highest medicinal levels. If you go on my website (it’s still not really listed under the right thing, I think it’s listed under “What the oil does and how it does it”, we took that down but I didn’t get to change the heading), but if you look under that heading you’ll find “Super oils”. If you read super oils and how I discovered all of this, these oils are basically the purest oils that you could possibly make. It’s nothing but pure cannabinoids. The healing powers of these oils are many times greater than even the best extracts that you could produce with a rice cooker. The healing powers are just phenomenal. The only logical reason that the pharmaceutical industry could have to prevent people from doing this is saying “we can produce it in a purer fashion”. This is nonsense. If you do what I’m telling you on the website, and build this simple equipment, you can make the purest oil on this planet.
Would you like to see cannabis totally legalized so that people can grow it?
All the laws and restrictions are all based on lies and propaganda. They’re absurd. We need to repeal all of this nonsense worldwide. This is what I’ve been telling these governments to do. Take these laws and throw them in a trash can because they’re only based in corruption. If you look at how these laws are put in place, it’s absurd. So far… the medicinal use is becoming available, more and more countries are getting involved in this but to me they’re not moving fast enough. I went to two federal ministers of health in Canada, Ann McLellan and Ujjal Dosanjh, of course they wouldn’t do anything. At that time there was over 70,000 people in Canada dying every year from cancer. I’m not saying that these extracts could have saved each and every one of them but I can tell you one thing: these extracts would have saved a very high number of them. I’m talking up over 90%. So when you think about that, 70,000 people dying in 2003. Okay, in 13 years, multiply that by 70,000. Who is responsible here? The Canadian government because they wouldn’t do the right thing. They’ve caused the suffering and death of so many people, and this is lingering on because they want their friends in the pharmaceutical industry to control it so they can all fill their pockets. The public doesn’t matter to these people. We need real people to represent us. We need the end of political parties, we need independent people representing us who will really work for their constituents. That’s the name of the game.
Okay, thank you very much Rick. The webpage again is phoenixtears.ca. Buy the book. I guess there will be other studies that you’ll be doing as well?
I’m hoping to get back into some research myself, that’s what I’ve been trying to do. There’s so much misinformation floating around out there right now, but when you make the extract yourself, all the mystery in medicine suddenly disappears. You see what these extracts can do. You now have your own medical system, and for the most part you don’t need theirs. It would be different if they were actually helping people rather than addicting them to all sorts of drugs. This is what they want: repeat business. When I was young, you went to the doctor, they gave you a prescription, you took it for a month and then you were healed. Today you go to the doctor and he gives you a prescription, before you know it you’re taking 10 more to fight the side effects of all the other prescriptions. Medicine has become nothing but a racket. Like I said, it’s our god-given right to use these plants to heal ourselves; as a matter of fact it says so right in the Christian bible. It’s right there in the bible, right in front of us. As I understand it, no man-made law can supersede God’s law. I think it’s high time people woke up. If they want to create a future for their own children, their own grandchildren… because the present way that we’re poisoning this planet every day, our children don’t have a future. Our immune systems are being compromised more and more. This is the reason we’re getting all these horrible diseases. But if you take the cannabis oil, it boosts your immune system, it works with your endocannabinoid system, it’s the solution to so many of our medical problems that the medical systems of today have no answer for. There’s the future. Let’s make it happen.
Thank you very much for the interview. I don’t know if you want to add something?
It’s just about people standing up for their rights. I see it as that. Like I said, we grew this plant for thousands of years with no regulations. Why do we need them now? Don’t be fooled by these politicians and the rest of them. They’re not telling you the truth about anything. Do the research yourself, find out your facts like I did. We’ve been researching this plant now for well over a decade, me and several other people I am associated with. We have never found anything about that plant to be detrimental. Nothing. Everything is based in lies. Once the human race understands that, maybe we can get back to reality.
