President's Dream Colloquium on Understanding Medical Marijuana

Previously, from 2003-2014, he served as Senior Medical Advisor, study physician and medical monitor to GW Pharmaceuticals for numerous Phase II-III clinical trials of Sativex® for cancer pain unresponsive to optimized opioid treatment, a Phase II study of Sativex to treat spasticity in cerebral palsy in children, various Phase I studies of Sativex drug abuse liability, and its effects on QTc interval and administration to patients with hepatic impairment, and Phase II studies of Epidiolex® for intractable epilepsy in children.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (Psychology) and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, before residencies in Pediatrics in Phoenix, Arizona and in Child and Adult Neurology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was a clinical neurologist in Missoula, Montana for 20 years in a practice with a strong chronic pain component. In 1995, he pursued a 3-month sabbatical doing ethnobotanical research with the Machiguenga people in Parque Nacional del Manu, Peru. He joined GW as a full-time consultant in 2003.

He has held faculty appointments in Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Montana, in Medicine at the University of Washington, and as visiting professor in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Harvard Medical School.

Russo is a former President of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, and former Chairman of the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the American Botanical Council, and Hemp Industries Association. He is author of Handbook of Psychotropic Herbs, co-editor of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutic Potential, and author of The Last Sorcerer: Echoes of the Rainforest. He was founding editor of Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics, selections of which were published as books: Cannabis Therapeutics in HIV/AIDS, Women and Cannabis: Medicine, Science and Sociology, Cannabis: From Pariah to Prescription, and Handbook of Cannabis Therapeutics: From Bench to Bedside. He has also published numerous book chapters, and over forty articles in neurology, pain management, cannabis, and ethnobotany. His research interests have included correlations of historical uses of cannabis to modern pharmacological mechanisms, phytopharmaceutical treatment of migraine and chronic pain, phytocannabinoid/terpenoid, /serotonergic and /vanilloid interactions, the endocannabinoid system, and its modulation by plants beyond cannabis.         

He has lectured and consulted in over 30 American states and more than 30 countries around the world.