What would currently-illegal drugs look like if produced by corporations?

[RainDog]

42. Here's the reality of the big biz market for cannabis products

At this time there are quite a few venture capitalists who are looking at the medical cannabis market.

This market revolves around the pharmaceutical uses of SYNTHETIC cannabinoids, produced in a lab, that mimic the properties of whole-plant cannabinoids.

Because of the basic scientific model for research, single, synthetic cannabinoid molecules are the only route pharma cos can take with this product that will create a return on investment, unless cannabis is illegal.

The ability to reproduce a synthetic is basic to the requirements necessary to meet standards for "medical use" in the regulations set up by the CSA. No plant will ever meet those requirements - it's impossible to do so. This is also why Sativex pretends its product is something other than the exact same "cannabis elixir" that was in every doctor's medicine bag for a hundred years in this nation. (Sativex is also, btw, virtually the same product as "Rick Simpson oil," which he has given away to help people.)

The uses for these synthetic products are in areas related to cancer treatment, pain-relief from cancer treatment, neuro-degenerative and auto-immune diseases like MS, CP, epilepsy, Parkinsons, arthritis, alzheimiers, diabetes... this is the market for cannabis-inspired, not cannabis itself, big biz products on the American market.

In order to develop a product, a company must spend millions of dollars on testing.

If a cheap, legal product exists, companies fear their product would have competition and they are reluctant to spend money on outlay for R&D. As Dr. Lester Grinspoon has noted - aspirin would not be a product that pharma cos would bother to bring onto the market today because the costs of making it available are so large, compared to the profits for something so cheap to produce.

This, again, is why GW Pharma, in Great Britain, and Bayer (the distribution outlet for GW in the U.S.) have a vested interest in opposing legalization of natural cannabis.

We should allow R&D into synthetic and natural cannabinoids to continue. Who knows, in the future people may have synthetic cannabinoids injected into the sites of tumors to shrink them and to stop cell growth in cancer cells - whose life cycles are disrupted by both THC and CBD molecules. Cannabis may offer a new treatment model for cancer.

Early tests indicate this is the direction for cannabis within the pharma side of this issue.

If current prohibition continues, however, such R&D occurs outside the U.S., and other nations derive the benefit from grants and investments in this emerging market. So, prohibition hurts innovation in this nation, as well as deprives citizens of their right to be left alone by the govt. regarding natural cannabis.