David Nutt

Yay.

Um, we're talking about Professor David Nutt today.

Oh, God.

So the former chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and the founder of Drug Science, Professor David Nutt.

He will discuss the future of medical cannabis research at the Cannabis Health Symposium in London later this year, which is quite soon.

The CBD accredited Cannabis Health Symposium returns to London for a full day, basically the evidence led across the policy regulation, access to clinical practice, bringing together the healthcare professionals, industry, and patient advocates, and obviously Professor David Nu- uh, neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.

Hmm

... patients r- registry, the T21 Drug Science has collected real world data on around 5,000 medical cannabis patients in the UK, linking the treatment to be a reduced symptoms and improvements in quality of life across a range of conditions, including anxiety, chronic pain, and PTSD, as well as being linked to considerable reduction in the use of prescribed opioids, among other, um, chronic pain patients.

And did it help you as well? Because, like, for me, I'm quite science-based, and I love exploring how the brain works and the nervous system and stuff like that.

And when I started researching it with Professor David Nutt, with his book, Drink, and that, it, it's like, God, it's so fascinating to know how I actually work.

And then I started looking at internal family systems, where we've all got parts of our personality that comes from childhood experiences, where we exile our pain, and that helped me really understand how I worked as well.

But it also helped me to, like, form my identity as a non-drinker as well.

It's the dopamine, isn't it?

Mm.

Um, so you spoke to, uh, Professor David Nutt, who I've had on my podcast.

And to be fair, I was really nervous interviewing him, and when he came on, he just put me at ease straight away.

Yeah, they definitely have, yeah.

Some people have had maybe disastrous times and David Nutt's vision of let's judge these things by the harm they cause and let's compare them with alcohol and nicotine and all the other sort of psychoactive substances.

What's your take on that?

I'm not really a big fan of the harm thing.

Thank you.

Hello and welcome to the Drug Science Podcast with me, David Nutt.

Here we're bringing together experts and activists for a rational, honest and informed conversation

about drugs.

The process involves designing and optimizing chemical compounds that interact precisely with biological targets to cure and manage diseases.

Here's Chris Smith with neuropsychopharmacologist, and a friend of the program, David Nutt.

So David, when I pop a pill, it's a paracetamol, how does it know where the pain is?

The molecular constituents, i.e., the active ingredient in paracetamol, flows through the body until it finds something to stick to, and actually, [laughs] we don't really know what paracetamol does stick to.

There's one other target, which is, uh, which are ion channels which conduct sodium, potassium, and calcium ions, and there are some medicines at work there.

But identifying the target protein allowed people then to develop bench assays, test tube assays, against which they could screen millions, literally millions of compounds to find ones that did what they wanted, and then they could patent them.

That was David Nutt at Imperial College London.

Now finally, we're going to examine what the future of chemistry and healthcare might look like.

And just because one approach doesn't work doesn't mean you're like doomed forever or because there's so many different ways that I think you can approach this.

So let's talk about Professor David Nutt.

Yes.

You know, who talks about alcohol.

And we had invited...

So David Nutt was in Australia at the time.

He was speaking at events for us around Australia, and so he came to this meeting with us.

But I think our first speaker was, was a woman called Vanessa, and you can see her story online.

And then she came to the meeting, and she spoke first, and she spoke about her husband and, and the terrible loss and what they'd experienced in the mental health system and, and that this was the only option that was left to them, and they couldn't- You know, take it on because of course it wasn't rescheduled at the time, and they'd lost him.

And there wasn't a dry in the room after that.

And then of course David Nutt came on and then, and then we spoke, you know, of more of the evidence and the, and the trials and the research.

And I think that that meeting was pivotal, um, in terms of really helping people to understand the human pain and suffering, and also then the scientific data and evidence.

You and I have spoken about this, the, the onus is always put on the person.

So we know from Professor David Nutt, he says alcohol is the fifth most addictive substance in the world.

And yet every single label says, "Drink responsibly.

Drink in moderation," as if it's that person, it's their responsibility-