4 ms·

Is the opposition to cannabis as a therapy at least part rooted in the fact it is not patentable? Large Pharma can't make enough money from something people cou

Is the opposition to cannabis as a therapy at least part rooted in the fact it is not patentable? Large Pharma can't make enough money from something people could grow themselves? A parallel story is the guy in the UK researching treating depression with 'magic mushrooms' in small doses (too little to be psychoactive). As I recall it took him 10 years to get a license to do the study! These things grow in your lawn in the UK! The results seemed good when compared to the poor outcomes for people on patentable anti-depressants

gravypod 10y ago
I have no oposition to people doing whatever they want but I wouldn't give my kid THC until the following happened: * I could obtain it from a trustworthy source * It's studies to understand it's effects on children (medical) * Understand any long-term effects it has on children's memory/behavior (psychological) I don't know if it not being patentable is accurate. You can patent your specificly mutated gene in the plant (like monsanto) to get exclusive rights. The plant is also presumably easy to cultivate as many untrained "farmers" do it. If you gave profesional botanists and farmers a crack at it I'm pretty sure they could come up with large scale and extremely cheap growth plans that are paralleled to the cost of tabaco. Lucky for them pot isn't as regulated as tabaco so they'd make out like kids in a candy store.
randomdrake 10y ago
> Is the opposition to cannabis as a therapy at least part rooted in the fact it is not patentable? Large Pharma can't make enough money from something people could grow themselves? No and no. Not only is it patentable, the United States Government famously holds one[1] for "Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectant." Additionally, there are already pharmaceutical companies producing, researching, breeding, and selling medical cannabis in other countries like Israel[2]. And if you're looking to see what's happening in the United States, GW Pharmaceuticals is seeing success in their Phase 3 trials for Dravet Syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome[3]. [1] - https://www.google.com/patents/US6630507 https://www.google.com/patents/US6630507 [2] - http://www.tikun-olam.info http://www.tikun-olam.info [3] - https://www.gwpharm.com/about-us/news/gw-announces-new-epidiolex®-cbd-positive-phase-3-data-dravet-syndrome-and-lennox https://www.gwpharm.com/about-us/news/gw-announces-new-epidi...
joatmon-snoo 10y ago
> Is the opposition to cannabis as a therapy at least part rooted in the fact it is not patentable? The IP is certainly fuzzy but that's no argument. If it can be commoditized and involves some form of creative/innovative work, there's pretty much always some way to create legal protection for it. Besides, just because there's potential for competition doesn't mean that people won't try to enter the market. > Large Pharma can't make enough money from something people could grow themselves? As the article itself explains, growing weed is not simple. A sophisticated operation requires a lot of resources and dedicated man-hours. The primary reason that no big, entrenched players are moving on it (or that anyone who does it hasn't gotten too big) is that the fact remains that marijuana is illegal. (This is true in a lot of countries, not just the U.S., but the rest of this comment is going to be U.S.-specific because I don't know the situation in other countries nearly as well.) No matter what the states say, federal law overrides state law, which means that anyone that grows pot has huge legal exposure. There's also a secondary problem: pot growers have a lot of trouble using the kinds of services that are traditionally available to businesses, because B2B's (1) want clients that are not at risk of getting shut down by a DEA investigation and (2) do not want to expose their own businesses to legal risk, which they would be by working with a pot-growing op. There's a lot of stories about dispensaries in Colorado who are denied, for example, banking services, because of the litigation it would expose banks to.
adventured 10y ago
That argument has never made any sense. There's an extreme amount of money to be made from national legalization. Moralization of pot as an issue is the primary culprit in question. The same type of moralizing, for one example by the Rockefeller Baptists, led to alcohol prohibition despite the incredibly vast amount of money to be made from keeping alcohol legal (which we see today in the truly massive scope of the US alcohol industry). The argument that certain power interests wanted to keep it illegal, to fund secret wars, has never made much sense either (other than that such activities might occur as a monetary & political convenience while prohibition exists). Marijuana legalization is worth perhaps $30 billion per year nationally, at all levels, via taxation (sales taxes, income taxes, specialty taxes, etc); the industry would generate at least $150 billion in sales nationally were it legalized. There's a vast amount of money that should motivate legalization. Moralization of an issue often trumps monetary concerns (we see this frequently in biotech / pharma as well, the FDA prevents rapid progress in all sorts of ways).

gravypod 10y ago

I have no oposition to people doing whatever they want but I wouldn't give my kid THC until the following happened: * I could obtain it from a trustworthy source * It's studies to understand it's effects on children (medical) * Understand any long-term effects it has on children's memory/behavior (psychological) I don't know if it not being patentable is accurate. You can patent your specificly mutated gene in the plant (like monsanto) to get exclusive rights. The plant is also presumably easy to cultivate as many untrained "farmers" do it. If you gave profesional botanists and farmers a crack at it I'm pretty sure they could come up with large scale and extremely cheap growth plans that are paralleled to the cost of tabaco. Lucky for them pot isn't as regulated as tabaco so they'd make out like kids in a candy store.

randomdrake 10y ago

> Is the opposition to cannabis as a therapy at least part rooted in the fact it is not patentable? Large Pharma can't make enough money from something people could grow themselves? No and no. Not only is it patentable, the United States Government famously holds one[1] for "Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectant." Additionally, there are already pharmaceutical companies producing, researching, breeding, and selling medical cannabis in other countries like Israel[2]. And if you're looking to see what's happening in the United States, GW Pharmaceuticals is seeing success in their Phase 3 trials for Dravet Syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome[3]. [1] - https://www.google.com/patents/US6630507 https://www.google.com/patents/US6630507 [2] - http://www.tikun-olam.info http://www.tikun-olam.info [3] - https://www.gwpharm.com/about-us/news/gw-announces-new-epidiolex®-cbd-positive-phase-3-data-dravet-syndrome-and-lennox https://www.gwpharm.com/about-us/news/gw-announces-new-epidi...

joatmon-snoo 10y ago

> Is the opposition to cannabis as a therapy at least part rooted in the fact it is not patentable? The IP is certainly fuzzy but that's no argument. If it can be commoditized and involves some form of creative/innovative work, there's pretty much always some way to create legal protection for it. Besides, just because there's potential for competition doesn't mean that people won't try to enter the market. > Large Pharma can't make enough money from something people could grow themselves? As the article itself explains, growing weed is not simple. A sophisticated operation requires a lot of resources and dedicated man-hours. The primary reason that no big, entrenched players are moving on it (or that anyone who does it hasn't gotten too big) is that the fact remains that marijuana is illegal. (This is true in a lot of countries, not just the U.S., but the rest of this comment is going to be U.S.-specific because I don't know the situation in other countries nearly as well.) No matter what the states say, federal law overrides state law, which means that anyone that grows pot has huge legal exposure. There's also a secondary problem: pot growers have a lot of trouble using the kinds of services that are traditionally available to businesses, because B2B's (1) want clients that are not at risk of getting shut down by a DEA investigation and (2) do not want to expose their own businesses to legal risk, which they would be by working with a pot-growing op. There's a lot of stories about dispensaries in Colorado who are denied, for example, banking services, because of the litigation it would expose banks to.

adventured 10y ago

That argument has never made any sense. There's an extreme amount of money to be made from national legalization. Moralization of pot as an issue is the primary culprit in question. The same type of moralizing, for one example by the Rockefeller Baptists, led to alcohol prohibition despite the incredibly vast amount of money to be made from keeping alcohol legal (which we see today in the truly massive scope of the US alcohol industry). The argument that certain power interests wanted to keep it illegal, to fund secret wars, has never made much sense either (other than that such activities might occur as a monetary & political convenience while prohibition exists). Marijuana legalization is worth perhaps $30 billion per year nationally, at all levels, via taxation (sales taxes, income taxes, specialty taxes, etc); the industry would generate at least $150 billion in sales nationally were it legalized. There's a vast amount of money that should motivate legalization. Moralization of an issue often trumps monetary concerns (we see this frequently in biotech / pharma as well, the FDA prevents rapid progress in all sorts of ways).