About
Welcome to our members-only event series, CannaConnect!
Join us for these monthly member connection calls to introduce yourself, ask questions, and discuss with other members. SCC Immediate Past-President, Dr. Jeff Hergenrather, will be hosting our October 2024 call!
Each month will offer an interactive blend of networking, clinical case discussions, and the latest in cannabis news. Connect with fellow SCC members, find or offer mentorship, share insights on clinical practices, and welcome new members to our thriving community.
Jeff Hergenrather, MD
Jeffrey Hergenrather, MD, a charter member of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians in 1999, would serve as president of the group 2008-2018. After graduating from UC Berkeley, Hergenrather got his MD from Brown University’s Program in Medicine in 1975. He had a one year rotating internship at the University of South Carolina’s Spartanburg General Hospital in the family practice program.
Hergenrather spent six years as the general practitioner caring for > 600-1500 residents of “The Farm,” an intentional community in rural Tennessee, and working as an emergency physician at Maury County Regional Hospital. At The Farm marijuana use was the norm for adults, and Hergenrather was able to observe its range of effects on people with various medical problems (and those in good health). He backed-up the Farm midwives with Ina May Gaskin for hundreds of births, and helped train midwives who would subsequently influence the American way of childbirth. His study of “Pollutants in Breast Milk of Vegetarians” ran as a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine (March 26, 1981).
Emergency Medicine would be Hergenrather’s specialty for more than 20 years after he moved to California in 1982, eventually settling in Sonoma County. After voters legalized the medical use of marijuana in 1996, Hergenrather could openly discuss it as a treatment option with patients. In 1999 he launched a private solo practice in the town of Sebastopol specializing in cannabis consultations. He joined the International Cannabinoid Research Society and began attending their annual symposia.
At the ICRS meeting in 2004 Hergenrather warned researchers from Sanofi-Aventis that —based on the range of beneficial effects reported by his patients— their plan to produce a cannabinoid-antagonist drug would have unforeseen negative consequences. He was unheeded —Rimonabant was marketed in Europe— but proved right in 2008 when it was withdrawn for safety reasons.
Many of the findings about cannabis as medicine reported by Hergenrather in SCC surveys have yet to be confirmed in clinical trials, but they have been of use to practitioners who accept the validity of clinical evidence. His pioneering 2005 paper “Cannabis Alleviates the Symptoms of Crohn’s Disease” was based on 38 patients’ seen by SCC physicians. His dramatic account of cannabis oil on a baby’s pacifier reducing an optic pathway glioma in 2011 alerted many doctors and patients to the anti-cancer potential of cannabinoids.
In December 2019 Hergenrather completed a three month ‘sabbatical’ as an Academic Visitor at the Technion Department of Biology, Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research Institute, in Haifa, Israel. His hobbies include organic farming (olives and apples), theater set design and building, and working with mosaic tile. He and wife Starr have been married 48 years and have four grown children, with whom, when they were young, lived in a schoolbus and later traveled the world with backpacks.
Must be a member to attend these monthly calls; you can learn more about joining here.
