I thoroughly enjoyed having Ruth Fisher, Ph.D., Cannabis researcher, and analyst, Co-Founder of Cann Dynamics, as well as the author of The Medical Cannabis Primer, on TSC Talks! I heard about Ruth’s book from another recent guest, Nikki Lawley and promptly ordered it, and reached out to Ruth for an interview. It’s a phenomenal resource, one that I have on my desk and refer to frequently. Before I launch into the episode notes, here’s a great description of the book written by Dan Larkin, that I found helpful:

“Getting clear, concise, and easy to understand information about cannabis is tough. There are lots of resources, but which ones can you trust? How can you be sure the information isn’t biased? How are you supposed to even understand all the terminology and science? Is it even legal?

All of this becomes doubly important if you’re researching medical cannabis as an alternative to conventional treatments or pharmaceuticals. You or someone you love may have recently been diagnosed with cancer, epilepsy, autism, MS, or PTSD. You may have been dealing with chronic pain. Whatever your personal reason, you deserve access to clear, concise information about medical cannabis….That’s where “The Medical Cannabis Primer” by Ruth D. Fisher, Ph.D. and edited & designed by her brother, A. Arthur Fisher, comes in. They’ve assembled a comprehensive, easy to read compendium of cannabis knowledge that’s full of unbiased information and easy to understand charts, graphs, and images.”

Ruth shares that it was through the process of helping her brother, who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, find adequate treatment, that she ended up researching cannabis. Raised by a father who was a private practice physician, a successful children's eye doctor, and Ruth’s idol, she speaks of his influence, “My dad was also an iconoclast, he didn't take things at face value, just because people said so. He did research in his area of medicine, and he questioned authority. And he encouraged us to do so. He would send us stuff to read a lot. And he would send an article and say, “read this article.!”, I'm like, “Dad, just tell me what it says.” He says, “No, I want you to read it yourself”. And that was always a pain. But at some point, I realized he didn't want to bias, the presentation of the information his view and his perspective. He wanted us to read it for ourselves and develop our own perspective or interpretation on what we thought of it. I always thought that was very interesting. It took me a long time to appreciate that”

Another formative factor Ruth mentions as shaping her life view was graduate school. “ I'm an economist. In economics, you learn that everything is supply and demand. So, you learn how you know all markets are shaped by the forces of supply and demand and you kind of understand things in those terms…. What's really interesting, and it was finally drummed into me that it doesn't matter what the results are. If your data and methodology aren't valid, they're not found, then the results don't matter. They're meaningless. That was really, really important in forming my attitudes about reading research and trying to evaluate whether or not I should consider them to be valid, based on the methodology and the data used. And it really, really impressed upon me the importance of good methodology in order to provide valid results.”

Here are a few quotes from the transcript of our interview highlighting Ruth’s entry into the cannabis industry and her realization that educating herself was necessary, “So I got into cannabis about four or five years ago. My brother started having health problems. And it turns out he was eventually diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And MS manifests itself differently in different people and the manifestation he gets is pain, a lot of neuropathic pain from different sources. And he was on a lot of different drugs trying to control or manage the pain and they all have really, really ugly side effects. And while they were helping some they weren't really doing enough. And my brother’s neurologist said, you know, maybe you could use benefit from cannabis"

"So, I will say that, yes, I had also smoked cannabis or pot in college and decided to, you know, wasn't my thing. And I knew that it was out there in the medical world, but really didn't pay any attention to it. I come in now, and the situation is, my brother has a lot of pain. He has chronic pain. And all I know is I want to do anything I can to help him minimize his pain. And so, I go into cannabis and my job as I saw it was to go in and figure out if cannabis was for real, and if so help him figure out what would help him. And so my goal here was to cut through all the BS and I didn't care what anyone had to say whether they were pro or anti, all I cared about was finding something that would help reduce my brother's pain. So, I drew upon all my past experiences in approaching things and I started reading…th first question was, well, what is cannabis and how does it work on the body? And I started reading about that and wow, kind of overwhelming.”

Ruth explains the challenges to finding well-rounded information and unbiased research on cannabis for multiple reasons and goes into detail on why this is so. Here’s one quote elaborating on this issue.

“In 1937 with the Marijuana Tax Act, the funds for research essentially dried up, not fully -there was a trickle of funding, but they largely dried up, except for NIDA. And so, you had this, and then in 1970, with the Controlled Substances Act when cannabis was officially categorized as a schedule one drug, all of a sudden, there's this one department within the National Institute of Health that had all this money to study the bad effects of cannabis. If you want to study the good effects, then it's really hard to get funding and it's really onerous. There's a lot of restrictions, you have to file with the DEA and get permission from them. You have to go through all these hoops with the government. It's really difficult and it's really stigmatized. You know, it could hurt your career if you do this”

She summarizes the state of research, “when people in the healthcare industry say there's no evidence that cannabis has been shown to be safe and effective, what they mean is no studies period, they mean no large scale clinical trials. And a large scale clinical trial is very expensive. And it's generally done by someone who's seeking FDA approval for a pharmaceutical. There are certain cannabis pharmaceuticals out there. And they've gone through a number of clinical trials. But again, those are isolates. And people who are doing the whole plant medicine and who are finding really amazing results. They don't have the money to fund large scale clinical trials. And I'm not trying, I'm not trying to make an excuse. I'm trying to explain why that evidence doesn't exist.”

This episode is rich with information and I personally learned a ton through the process of preparing for and interviewing Ruth and then reading her book. I’ll leave you with a final quote but please take the time to listen to this thorough, fascinating and very personal discussion providing not only information on medical cannabis such as dosing, forms of use, whole plant, but the many factors that have influenced healthcare opposition, recent advances, risks and more.

“The big problem I had is the people who are close to it, and who have patients who are afraid to tell them that they're using cannabis because now you're missing all the interactions. And now you're going to have people using it with zero oversight from their doctors, and you're going to cause all sorts of problems. So, I think the first step is for the doctors to start learning from the patients and just being open to it. I know that my brother had a neurologist, and very early on, he had some really, really bad symptoms. And very early on, he was going through things and he got to the point many times where he's like, I am willing to try anything to address this problem. And at one point, you know, he got to diet, and he put himself on a very limited diet. And lo and behold, that solved a lot of his problem. And he went to one of his neurologists, his neurologist who's making different recommendations. And my brother said, Well, you know, I changed my diet, and that has really helped. And the neurologist said, Yeah, you know, I've heard that from other patients, but I really know nothing about nutrition, so I can't really comment on that. And Eddie, that doctor did end up becoming informed on nutrition and actually now incorporates that into his programs.”

Here are Ruth’s links:

Order: https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Cannabis-Primer-Ushering-Marijuana/dp/1885176023
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rfisher/
https://medicalcannabisprimer.com/
https://www.quantaa.com/
https://canndynamics.com/
https://incolor.net/news
https://www.cedfoundation.com/2019/06/07/ruth-fishers-cannabis-primer-book/
https://www.techzone360.com/topics/techzone/articles/2020/01/30/444355-canndynamics-co-founder-educate-engage-cannabis-the-blockchain.htm
https://www.independent.com/2020/01/06/the-medical-cannabis-primer-cuts-through-the-crap/