Expect Hard Science at Santa Barbara Medical Cannabis Expo

Two lightbulb moments led the two keynote speakers at the upcoming Santa Barbara Medical Cannabis Conference & Expo into their respective fields. 

Dr. Uwe Blesching, a researcher studying how marijuana can treat chronic pain and break patients’ dependence on opioids, was inspired when he was a San Francisco paramedic in the mid-1990s. He helped revive an attorney who had overdosed on heroin and later confided he’d been shooting up for years to cope with his mental-health issues and had also used cannabis to curb his pain.

For Dr. Joe Goldstrich, a go-to consulting physician for oncologists looking to augment their cancer treatments with cannabis, the bulb flickered at a Denver medical conference in 2014. A presenter displayed the brain stems of two patients who had used only cannabis to treat their brain cancer. In both cases, their tumors shrank dramatically.