11.08.17-11.15.17 SEVEN DAYS FEATURE 31
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SEVENDAYSVT.COM
CANNABIS CALLING
Bob Melamede
MATTHEW THORSEN
Tears” — an international nonprofit foundation that promotes cannabis education, research and advocacy. Melamede long served as the group’s science adviser and program director. He’s also been involved with several cannabis-related businesses, including as former president and CEO of Cannabis Science, a publicly traded biotech firm based in Irvine, Calif. Though our interview was scheduled to last about an hour, Melamede talked for more than three, at times following scientific threads all the way back to the big bang, the rise of vertebrates and the emergence of CB1, the first mammalian cannabinoid receptor. He saved his most stinging criticism — and colorful language — for the medical establishment and Big Pharma. “Our government doesn’t want us well. They want us sick. We’re dollar signs,” Melamede ranted. The conversation was regularly interrupted by phone calls from overseas friends and business associates, some of whom, he admitted, were felons with pot-related convictions. Although ostensibly retired, “I’m busier than I’ve ever been in my life, I work harder than I ever have in my life, and I spend more money than I’ve ever had in my life,” Melamede said. He isn’t just a popular former college professor who lectures worldwide on medicinal cannabis; he’s part of a loose global network of underground activists, which he likened to the computer hacker group Anonymous. “Right now, there are people all around the world treating people with all sorts of illnesses, a whole counterculture medical establishment,” he explained. “The difference is: Ours works, and it’s free, or as close to free as we can make it.” Earlier that day, he learned that his girlfriend, Danica Una Petrovic, had been arrested in Belgrade, Serbia, for possession of cannabis oil. According to Melamede, she’d allegedly used cash contributions from anonymous donors to provide cannabis oil to patients suffering from cancer, multiple sclerosis, seizure disorders and the like. Most, he noted, live in places where medical cannabis is illegal. “When they arrested her, they said, ‘We know you’re not a criminal,’” Melamede reported. “She said, ‘Then why are you stealing medicine from sick people?’” At press time, Petrovic was no longer in police custody. Melamede has never been convicted of a crime himself, but a Vermont financial institution recently terminated his accounts for reasons