Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Sunday, September 21st. Today on Forbes, this pharma

billionaire is developing a cannabis painkiller to replace dangerous opioids. There is nothing sexy

about the next big thing in weed. Vertanical, the Munich-based pharmaceutical company, is developing a cannabinoid-based

extract to treat chronic pain, it hopes, will soon become an approved medicine, first in the

European Union and eventually in the United States. The drug, currently called Ver-O-1,

is not for stoners. Each dose is low enough to avoid getting most

patients high, the company says, but it packs enough low levels of cannabinoids, including

THC, to relieve pain. And if it is approved, it won't be found at a cannabis dispensary

either. Instead, Clemens Fisher, the 50-year-old medical doctor, who is the

founder of Vertanical, hopes it will become the first cannabis-based painkiller prescribed by physicians

and covered by insurance. Fisher, who stopped practicing medicine decades ago to get an MBA

from Harvard, says, quote, I usually end up with the boring things

no one wants to do. A serial pharmaceutical and supplement entrepreneur, Fisher, who is born in

Weilheim, Germany, runs a mini empire through the Futru Group, a Munich-based holding company

with a collection of about 20 drug and R&D companies.

Over the last two decades, he is built and sold a series of companies in the over-the-counter

drug and supplement space, ranging from sleep aids to treatments for irritable bowel syndrome,

amassing a $1 billion fortune. Although Ver O1 is cannabis-based, Fisher has no interest in selling marijuana,

which he says is a, quote, shiny object to be avoided. The $32 billion in 2024 sales cannabis industry

in the U.S., which spans 40 states, is plagued with banking and financial challenges due to pot still

being illegal at the federal level.

The industry is still waiting, rather impatiently, for President Donald Trump to announce

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