Michael Backes

Michael Backes is the author of Cannabis Pharmacy: The Practical Guide to Medical Marijuana, published by BDL/Hachette with a foreword by Dr. Andrew Weil. Backes and Weil serve on the Science & Medical Advisory Board of Maui Grown Therapies. Backes is based in Los Angeles, where he works with a California consultancy that specializes in cannabis science, intellectual property and policy issues. In 2007, Backes co-founded Cornerstone Research Collective, the first evidence-based medical cannabis collective in California. Backes secured major funding for the American Herbal Pharmacopeia's recent Cannabis monographs, the first published in the US since 1942. Michael Backes was an editor for the book Cannabis Evolution and Ethnobotany by Robert Connell Clarke (author of Marijuana Botany and Hashish!) and Mark Merlin (author of Man and Marijuana), published in 2013 by University of California Press. Backes sits on the Cannabis Committee of the American Herbal Products Association and has served as a board member of the National Cannabis Industry Association. Prior to working with medical cannabis, for decades Backes worked in the entertainment industry. He worked on projects with Michael Crichton, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Tom Clancy and Sam Raimi. He co-founded the American Film Institute's Digital Media Studies program. His entertainment and hi-tech consulting clients have included Apple Computer, USC, Credit Suisse/First Boston and Sega. His work has been profiled in Wired, Premiere magazine, and entertainment industry trade publications.