The therapeutic benefits of cannabis: science or voodoo?
Posted On November 26, 2019
Dr. Jan Roberts’ interest in cannabis began when she got shingles. The medication she’d been prescribed by her doctor wasn’t having the desired effects, and a friend suggested she try cannabis.
“It was an ‘a-ha’ moment for me,” she says. “Oh my god, there’s something therapeutic here.”
Roberts, a licensed clinical social worker who teaches at the NYU Silver School of Social Work, has turned into a crusader of sorts for education about the therapeutic effects of cannabis. She and Joe Brown, owner of Your CBD Store of West Mobile, joined in a recent episode of “What’s Working With Cam Marston” and discussed the benefits of cannabis and CBD.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve found that usually stigma gets in the way of everything,” Roberts says. “We have such a stigma with cannabis that we always think of the pothead or the person who wants to get stoned, but it can be used therapeutically.
“When you really see what the patient outcomes are, it’s phenomenal.”
Roberts, a Mobile native who is founder and CEO of Partners in Health and Wellbeing and co-founder of the International Research Center on Cannabis and Health, shares how cannabis products, including CBD and even low levels of THC, can be helpful for a wide range of ailments, why it’s essential to seek out only products that have been laboratory tested, and why the laws in states like Alabama are keeping us from seeing cannabis’ full therapeutic effects.
Brown, who began the process of opening his store after trying CBD the first time, shares some of the products his store offers and some of the clients it serves.
“My lower back felt better, my ankle felt better, I felt better,” Brown says. “I said, man, this stuff’s voodoo. I’m going to open a store.”
Join us for a liberating discussion about cannabis and efforts to educate about its therapeutic effects.