#5: It's a Hemp Thing

DR. ETHAN RUSSO: CBD & CLINICAL
ENDOCANNABINOID DEFICIENCY
Editor’s Note: This is a partial
transcript from the Project
CBD video series “Cannabis
Conversations.” The interview
was conducted by Martin A. Lee,
director of Project CBD and author
of the best selling Smoke Signals:
A Social History of Marijuana —
Medical, Recreational and Scientific.
To see the complete video and/or
transcript visit www.projectcbd.org
and click on “Videos.”
Mary’s extends its thanks to Project
CBD for allowing reproduction of this
transcript and encourages readers to
support this pre-eminent source of
information on CBD.
Transcript
Project CBD: Today we’re talking
with Dr. Ethan Russo. Dr. Russo,
a board certified neurologist, is
the medical research director at
Phytecs*, a biotechnology company
that specializes in developing
different ways of targeting the
endocannabinoid system for therapeutic
benefit. Dr. Russo was
formerly the senior medical advisor
to GW Pharmaceuticals and a widely
published author in many scientific
journals, as well as a contributor
and editor of several books. He has
also been a faculty member at the
University of Washington, a guest
teacher at Harvard Medical School,
and other academic institutions.
Welcome to Cannabis Conversations.
13
Russo: Thank you for having me.
Project CBD: Ethan, you’ve been
way ahead of the curve with
respect to cannabidiol (CBD), years
before most people in the medical
marijuana community had ever
heard of it, you were emphasizing
its significance. Tell us briefly, what
is the significance of CBD?
Russo: Well I think we need a little
background first to indicate that
cannabidiol has always been part
of the capabilities of cannabis.
Its just that it’s been pushed into
the background through selective
breeding, basically another
byproduct of prohibition where the
emphasis has been on maximum
psychoactivity to the exclusion, for
the most part, of medicinal benefits
that might go beyond that. But,
clearly, this is a substance that has
a lot to offer on many levels.
Firstly, it synergizes with THC,
so it complements the ability of
THC to treat pain while in its
own right it’s an excellent antiinflammatory
without the liabilities
that we say get from non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory drugs with their
tendencies to produce serious side
effects like ulcers, heart attacks, and
strokes, these just aren’t a liability
with cannabidiol.
So cannabidiol, on the one hand,
can counteract some of the less
desirable effects of THC such as this
tendency to produce anxiety and