Why would we turn to Big Pharma to synthesize what Nature already got right? Millions of people are successfully using medical marijuana to treat an array of disorders and diseases. We do not need huge corporations to fix what is not in fact broken.
Many have speculated whether or not the pharmaceutical industry has something to do with the continued prohibition on marijuana. It’s easy to see where these suspicions are coming from, considering the fact that marijuana has been proven as an effective treatment for so many maladies that “Big Pharma” treats with synthetic medicines.
Matt Agorist, with The Free Thought Project, notes that “there are over 20,000 articles searchable on PubMed detailing the effects of “cannabinoid”(s). New research has shown that cannabis is an effective treatment for a myriad of ailments ranging from cancer to epilepsy, to PTSD.”
Now, the pharmaceutical industry seems to realize the inevitability of legal marijuana – across the nation – so they are doing something about it: they are trying to patent it.
Since it is impossible to patent the plant itself, Big Pharma is turning to its scientists to synthesize and patent the active chemicals in marijuana – so they can monopolize the market for these chemicals.
The drug Marinol, produced by Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. “contains a nearly identical molecular structure as the THC molecule and has similar effects of marijuana on cancer patients in regards to increasing appetite, etc.,” Agorist writes. “But unlike its natural counterpart, Marinol does not grow on trees.”
The results of this synthesizing has been numerous deaths, according to Ouest France. They report that in a test by the corporation Biotrial, conducted for the Portuguese pharmaceutical company Bial, there have been six people hospitalized in Rennes.
Recently, one of those victims of these unnecessary tests has died. The tests are unnecessary because Nature has already given us the cannabis plant itself to properly deliver these active chemicals. We do not need the pharmaceutical industry to isolate and encapsulate them for us.
Marisol Touraine, France’s Minister of Health made it clear that no natural marijuana was used in these studies at all. Only the synthetic ECS stimulant was used.
Agorist notes that “Taken orally, the drug was undergoing a Phase 1 clinical trial at a licensed private European laboratory that specializes in clinical trials, the French health ministry said… Attempting to recreate the natural analgesic effects of cannabis, this pharmaceutical company unwittingly killed someone and gravely injured several others.”
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