Folk and country singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge was arrested at the US border in North Dakota after a K-9 unit detected drugs on her tour bus.
Border patrol agents discovered marijuana oil, which Etheridge says she uses for pain management as part of her cancer treatment. The 56-year-old singer was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 and began chemo in 2005.
“I asked many of my friends [who had gone through chemo], ‘What’s the experience? What are you doing?’ And my friend David Crosby, he was the first one who said, ‘You know, Melissa, you have to do medicinal marijuana. You have to [try] cannabis. That’s the way to do it. It’s too hard otherwise,'” Etheridge said in an interview with Us Weekly.
She began taking medicinal marijuana to improve her mood, regulate pain, and increase her appetite. The use of medicinal marijuana is legal in her home state of California.
Hear her speak about surviving breast cancer in the Entertainment Tonight interview below.