Paul Armentano has a post at the NORML blog that addresses my absolute favorite spot in the law: that awkward no-man's-land between criminal drug law and pharmaceutical administrative law, which is where the demonized, criminalized plant marijuana, which will drive you insane and destroy society, turns into a totally legitimate, FDA-approved pharmaceutical drug like Marinol, which can be dispensed by pharmacies and consumed by law-abiding grandmas while watching re-runs of Laverne and Shirley.
Armentano notes:
Big Pharma is busily applying for — and has already received — multiple patents for the medical properties of pot. (The US government has too, but that’s a different story all together.) These include patents for synthetic pot derivatives (such as the oral THC pill Marinol), cannabinoid agonists (synthetic agents that bind to the brain’s endocannabinoid receptors) like HU-210 and cannabis antagonists such as Rimonabant. This trend was most recently summarized in the NIH paper, “The endocannabinoid system as an emerging target of pharmacotherapy,” which concluded, “The growing interest in the underlying science has been matched by a growth in the number of cannabinoid drugs in pharmaceutical development from two in 1995 to 27 in 2004.”
In other words, at the same time the American Medical Association is proclaiming that pot has no established medical value, Big Pharma is in a frenzy to bring dozens of new, cannabis-based medicines to market.
Interestingly, Armentano argues against the frequently asserted notion that big pharma is somehow conspiring to keep the plant form of marijuana illegal.
Armentano's argument failed to change my mind; at worst it is a non-sequitor, at best it is merely ineffective. It is precisely because they are rapidly developing cannabis-based medicines that they would want to see the continued prohibition of pot.
The pharmaceutical industry and the rest of the medical establishment operate under the convenient fallacy that only pharmaceutically pure substances qualify as 'medicine"; there is clearly a bias towards synthetics. Which is why Armentano's point that "Chances are that a government that is unreasonably hostile toward the marijuana plant will also be unreasonably hostile toward sanctioning cannabis-based pharmaceuticals..." is wrong. Thus why marinol is so readily accepted as a Schedule III drug. Sativex, not having found regulatory approval yet, is an ineffective counterexample. Theoretically, being a whole plant extract wouldn't it qualify as a Schedule I drug anyway? Even if it does get approved, that would not necessarily mean that the pharmaceutical industry does not support prohibition; GW pharmaceuticals itself discounts marijuana, inhaled in its plant form, as medicine. It could merely mean that they alone wish to possess rights to manufacture and distribute it...and could therefore still favor prohibition to protect their sole access and profits.
Whether or not the market share that would be compromised by patients growing their own is significant, we must never underestimate the lure of the monopoly. I am also not entirely convinced that the market share would be insignificant, given the draw backs to Marinol, especially dose titration and lack of proper cannabinoid blend (pharma seems oblivious to the fact that there are more than three major compounds--THC, CBN, and CBD--that combine to produce pot's medicinal benefits, and they mostly only focus on THC). I would be interested in seeing statistics showing the number of people using marinol versus regular pot in states where both are available. I suspect that the rates of marinol use are (at least statistically) significantly lower in those states.
I certainly agree with Armentano when he rhetorically asks and answers, "Should the advent of legal, alternative pot-based medicines ever warrant or justify the criminalization of patients who find superior relief from natural cannabis? Certainly not"--and in a logical world it would not. However, as he pointed out at the beginning, even the federal government has applied for patents for cannabis based medicines, and that hasn't stopped them from denouncing medical marijuana yet.
My cursory internet search revealed the study "Partnership for a Drug Free America
Sources of Funding from 1988-91" and while the information is older than I would have liked, I think it illustrates the point. (http://www.druglibrary.org/SCHAFFER/library/pdfa1.htm)
Pharmaceutical manufacturers donating to Partnership for a Drug Free America include: Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, CIBA-GEIGY/Pharmaceuticals Division, Colgate-Palmolive , Dow Chemical Company/Dow U.S.A., Glaxo Inc., Hoechst-Celanese Pharmaceuticals, Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., Merck & Company, Inc., Pfizer Inc., Proctor & Gamble Co., Rite Aid (which certainly relies on big pharma), and SmithKline Beecham (now merged with Glaxo). While I cannot say for sure whether or not things have changed significantly given the popularization of cannabis based medicines, I doubt it. Is that alone proof of a conspiracy? Definitely not, but it IS reason to not discount the existence of a system of vested interests protecting their profit source. Clearly further study needs to be done on the current state of anti-drug funding coming from big-pharma...more than I have time for on my lunch break. Sorry it seems I hijacked your blog to rant Alex; I’m a big fan.
Posted by: Brendan | July 11, 2008 at 10:43 AM