Morgan Spurlock, documentary filmmaker of such films at Super Size Me and the television series 30 Days, has now entered into America's own green zone, medical marijuana, with his new show on CNN, Inside Man, premiering this Sunday at 10 p.m. ET.
And, if it's now on CNN, have Americans must have reached a tipping point of acceptance on medical marijuana?
"I think it's telling in a sense," says Spurlock. "It is not just a blip on a two-minute pop-up on a news story, that we could do a whole hour dedicated to a documentary series. So I think that is more telling about where I think marijuana is right now. It has gone beyond the speed of a blip on the radar."
In the episode of Inside Man, Spurlock becomes a volunteer at one of the biggest collectives in California, Harborside Health Center. But what fears or misconceptions about working at ground zero for medical marijuana fall away pretty fast for Spurlock.
"I tell you the thing that is great about Harborside is all the people that work at Harborside. Like, it is one of the most wonderful work environments of any place that I think you could ever go. It is just such a cognitive energy and a positive atmosphere. There are no attitudes," Spurlock explains.
The episode's profile of medical marijuana shows people from all walks of life telling their stories of illness and relief.
People who I saw, at one point, you know we are a country that really does love to prescribe a lot of prescription medication for everything and people who are on four or five different medications, who will become addicted to a lot of this medication, so much so that they were kind of withdrawn from life and family, you name it. And once they started going on medicinal marijuana or some kind of a cannabis product their life turned around. They were off this medication.
Same thing I met a lot of guys who were former soldiers, you know guys who were back from Iraq and Afghanistan and were suffering from really heavy PTSD to the point where they were dysfunctional. They couldn't even connect with their loved ones. And once they had gone there and were on some kind of medication from Harborside, again they turned their life around. Now they have these really kind of enacted relationships again with wives or with their children. They are able to have the quality of life that didn't exist before. You see things like that -- I think will really show people a different side of life that they really haven't seen before.
Will CNN's take on medical marijuana change anything after Sunday's episode?
Well, what you hope... But I hope it will open the door to a larger thing. I hope it makes people... well 30 days from this show I think, it will make people's perspective shift a little bit. I think it will show you some things on the front line to whatever situation it may be that you may be might not consider or thought about. Or present a point of view that you normally haven't heard.
Like any good documentary filmmaker, Spurlock tries repeatedly to get a phone call from Northern California Department of Justice attorney Melinda Haag for questions about Harborside's recent court appearance(s) in the episode. With CNN now making the issue of medical marijuana even more widely known, perhaps Spurlock will get that phone call come Monday.
"You would like to think that happens but I haven't gotten a call back from McDonalds back and that has been 10 years. I'm not holding my breath," says Spurlock with a laugh.