[MUSIC] Hello everyone? My name is Kent Hutchison. I am a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience in the University of Colorado Boulder. I was a member of the national academy of sciences committee That reviewed the health effects of cannabis and published a lengthy report in 2017. I also spoke at the NIH summit on marijuana in 2016 and delivered briefings on the hill in Washington DC. And I've been conducting NIH1 research in this area now for a number of years. I currently teach a course on cannabis and health on the Boulder campus. So you might be asking yourself what motivated this guy to develop a Coursera specialization on cannabis? Well my experiences over the last few years have made it clear to me that for a variety of reasons which we will discuss in these courses. The scientific and medical community has failed to provide the public with information that's actually useful. Let met stress the word useful in terms of making decisions about whether or not to use cannabis products and maybe even more importantly, about how to use them in ways that minimize risks and maximize benefits. Let me give you a concrete example. In 2014, I watched my 70 years old mother travel from Oklahoma to Colorado because she was desperate to find something that might help with her chronic pain. Having tried everything else in this 50 year battle with chronic pain, my mother was a lifelong educator who never took anything stronger than ice tea, unless it was prescribed by a doctor. I know that she asked the healthcare providers about cannabis, they were unable or unwilling to say anything about it. So she came to Colorado, she visited multiple dispensaries. She got different recommendations from each one. In the end, she had to experiment on herself to learn how to minimize the harmful effects and maximize the benefits. As another example, my partner was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer during my work on the National Academy's report. Even in 2016, her doctors were unable to say anything about whether or how cannabis might be helpful to her. She wanted to minimize these opioids, because she hates the side effects. When she asked about which products she should try post surgery, they shrug their shoulders and said we have no idea what to tell you. Later when she asked about how to use a combination of CBD and THC to address chemotherapy induced neuropathy, she got the same response. Let me say we should be able to do better than we have no idea what to tell you. When I give a presentation and I ask people in the audience if they know someone whose had a similar experience, lots of people nod their head. And people are not getting information from healthcare providers or public health officials. Rather they're getting their information about cannabis products from the Internet, from social media, from other sources, they're not always reliable. Our families with children with seizure disorders, our veterans with PTSD and chronic pain, our opioid use disorder patients, our cancer patients, our aging parents, they deserve better. People want and need information about the potential risks and benefits of cannabis products. So they can weigh the pros and cons of cannabis versus other possible treatments. That information should be consistently available from healthcare providers, from public health officials and from people who work in the industry. Particularly those who work on the front lines in the dispensaries. And perhaps most importantly, the information should be based on science. And should be delivered with some consistency across health care providers, across public health officials, and from dispensary to dispensary. In other words, patients should not be getting two completely different pieces of information, two completely different recommendations from different places. Patients should not be leaving a healthcare provider's office with zero information. And nobody should be forced to endure an awful experience the first time they try cannabis product because they accidentally use too much THC. Surely we can all agree on that, right? So who is the intended audience for the four courses that make up this specialization? Well, this specialization is intended for the patients and their loved ones who have questions about cannabis products. It's intended for healthcare providers who want to provide more information to their patients. It's intended for those who work in public policy or public health, we want to better understand the implications of legalization for public health. And it's very much intended for people who currently work in the cannabis industry or people who want to work in the cannabis industry. [COUGH] The growth of this industry, as you probably know, is skyrocketing, and so are the jobs. Just about every mainstream media outlet has published a story about the growth of jobs in this area. It's very important that people who are working in the frontlines understand evidence. So how is the specialization designed to be helpful? Well, the specialization is designed to promote communication amongst different stakeholders and encourage long term learning about dissemination of evidence based information regarding the effects of cannabis products. So in fact, the experiential exercises that engage students in these courses are designed to do exactly that, let me give you an example. One of the course exercises involves different stakeholders visiting dispensaries to ask important questions about product safety about the risks and the benefits of different products. And also has patients and industry professionals engaging conversations with healthcare providers and public health officials. So that is a summary of what I'm trying to do here with these courses. I also want to say a word about the delivery of the content. As you can imagine, the University of Colorado does not have the same kind of budget available for the production of online courses as say a Harvard or a Stanford. We don't have a production crew, no green room that I know of, no stunt doubles, it's mostly just me and my phone. Now personally, I kind of like it that way because I'm free to shoot these videos, right in the natural beauty that surrounds us here in Colorado. And free to be completely authentic and genuine in terms of the content and delivery. I hope that comes across clearly in these courses. To wrap up, I believe this is an area of research and education that's very important. I'm telling my students now for years that if they want to make a difference, this is a great area to be in. Unlike other areas in science, with cannabis the evidence base is small, and the dissemination of the evidence that we do have is lacking. This is an area where a person can make a big difference regardless of where they are more focused or more interested in the risks of cannabis products or the benefits. So for those students and professionals who want to make a difference for those individuals and their loved ones who face difficult challenges, this is for you. I hope you find it helpful and useful and thank you for listening.
