As for all the "given 6 months to live" stories, I keep hearing them all the time in a variety of contexts, and, excuse my scepticism, I think most of them are either huge misunderstandings from patients or their relatives of the information they are given, or, at worst, pure confabulation.
I'd agree and that's why I hope the right research is being done. Even with the people I know, I don't really know the details of what their doctors were saying.
With my friend who died last year. She had three courses of chemo over 18 months (all designed to manage/slow progress of the cancer rather than kill it). The third course was the final cocktail they could use. She took cannabis to reduce treatment side-effects during the second and third course, having had a bad time during the first one.
When she was told the third (and final) course hadn't been as effective as the earlier two, she was advised that from that point she was essentially in the hands of palliative care and karma, but that she was unlikely to live more than a few months.
She continued to take the cannabis oil. Not with an expectation of a cure (her blood tests etc said the cancer was still spreading) but to maintain her appetite amongst other things. When she did try to do without it (what she wanted was expensive and hard to get) her appetite faded and she picked up a couple of infections, including pneumonia. So she started taking again, and lived a relatively symptom free life for a couple of years more.
I don't know if it "really" helped, and that bugs me. If it did have an effect on her appetite and help pain management then that in itself might well account for her joining the survivors for that much longer. But if it does do that, then it's still a shame that the only way she could get it was illegal, a hassle, and expensive.