5 ms·
As time goes on though, as we can already see, specific components that make up the plant will be taken out and used on their own. This is already happening wit
by milkytron 11y ago
As time goes on though, as we can already see, specific components that make up the plant will be taken out and used on their own. This is already happening with THC and CBD with the plant being made into oils and concentrates. If cannabis becomes legal, I'm sure pharmaceutical companies will continue this trend in an aim to find the purest and most effective way to administer the drug, just like opioids today.
- GordonS 11y agoYes, it's probably inevitable. I can't find the link now, but I recently read a paper from Israel about how the effects of CBD acted in a bell curve when administered alone, but were much more linear when taken as part of a whole plant. There are many cannabinoids, and they do often seem to work best when taken together.
- nommm-nommm 11y agoI'd still rather take an aspirin than eat willow bark though. Acetylsalicylic acid has less side effects than salicylic acid and made it safer! Isolating salicylic acid from willow bark and then a century later synthesizing acetylsalicylic from salicylic acid were all major achievements in medicine. It wasn't some sort of evil scheme. I'm also guessing synthesizing acetylsalicylic in a lab is better than growing willow trees in almost every way. Less resource intensive, more environmentally friendly, cheaper, easier to scale, and faster production. The "natural is always better" (for varying definitions or "natural", of course!) argument is silly. "heavy refinement, solvents, chemical processes" are all just scare words. They don't mean anything useful. I can use those words to accurately describe cooking my dinner.
- ihsw 11y agoThe usage of "heavy refinement, solvents, and chemical processes" wasn't meant to scare, it was meant to inform -- those have costs associated to them, high costs. The process of taking willow bark and turning it into a consumable product is not minimal, whereas taking cannabis and turning it into a consumable product is very minimal. From a practicality standpoint, it is simply logical that medicine derived from cannabis is superior to willow bark.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago> The process of taking willow bark and turning it into a consumable product is not minimal How did you get this idea? Scrape some bark off a tree and steep it in hot water. You now have a consumable product.
- billmalarky 11y agoI don't claim to be an expert, but I've read time and time again the argument (from medicinal users) that pure THC in pill form doesn't really replicate the effects of using actual cannabis that well. Mainly because there are a variety of different chemicals/cannabinoid at play when cannabis is ingested traditionally, not just one "purest" form of THC in high doses which is what you find in THC pills. Not to say it can't be replicated/refined into pill form correctly, but my guess is it just won't be. I don't think there will be a market for high quality pot-pills large enough to justify the massive investment needed to do it right when a better alternative (natural cannabis) already exists on the market and can be ingested in ways people generally enjoy (vapor, snacks, teas, etc). That is, companies probably aren't going to increase revenues by increasing the quality of a product that already exists because the people who already use THC pills can't be "re-converted", and enough of the people who don't use THC pills, but are in the market for medicinal THC, probably won't make the switch.
- the_watcher 11y agoSure, but that doesn't prevent the basic plant from being distributed and consumed in the way it has for centuries.