FDA Persecutes Pot Patients So Proceeds Profit Big Pharma

Marijuana is the flagship herb for governmental suppression of natural products so that Big Pharma can have a monopoly.

by Heidi Stevenson

22 April 2011

While the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) criminalize people who use marijuana for medicinal purposes, even to the point of threatening state employees engaged in state-approved dispensaries, the FDA has been planning to hand the pot business over to Big Pharma.

One of the tenets of patent law is that natural products cannot be patented. Therefore, marijuana cannot be patented as a pharmaceutical drug. However, they and their derivatives can be sold for medicinal uses. Of course, there's little profit in it—unless government is enlisted to criminalize its growth and use by common people while licensing sales of derivatives and artificial copies to Big People/Pharma. That, of course, is exactly what's happening—and marijuana is merely the flagship herb.

The FDA's Hypocrisy

Whatever one's personal views on marijuana, the fact remains that the government's actions demonstrate inherent hypocrisy. While vilifying it and punishing, even to extreme degrees, people who use, grow, or sell it, the FDA is handing the business over to Big Pharma and its cohort, Big Medicine.

On its website page entitled, "What FDA Doesn’t Regulate, the statement is made that "Drugs of Abuse" are not regulated by them because:

Illegal drugs with no approved medical use—such as heroin and marijuana--are under the jurisdiction of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Yet, the FDA has licensed Marinol, a drug that was derived from a single tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredients of marijuana.

Worse, the cannabis products Big Pharma produces are significantly inferior to the natural weed. Marijuana is effective because of a synergistic blend of substances. Those who rely on it for medical purposes also understand that different varieties result in somewhat different effects. Marinol is a derivative from a Sativa variety of marijuana. It includes only one, 11-hydroxy-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, out of at least 85 different varieties. Is it any wonder that most patients find it useless, even when they achieve great relief from a wide array of symptoms and pain with the use of pure marijuana?

And now, there's a new one on the way. GW Pharmaceuticals is starting its Phase III trials of Sativex. It is already approved in the UK and Spain, and it's sold for easing spasticity from multiple sclerosis, but the company has hopes of selling it for cancer and neuropathic pain, too.

Patients' Needs

The needs of patients are not factored in. Patients with glaucoma, whose vision is preserved with marijuana, are forced to go blind as the federal government, with the tacit agreement of the FDA, shuts down state-approved dispensaries and grow operations.

Patients whose needs are not fulfilled by the limited varieties of cannabinoids available in drugs are of no concern to the US federal government, nor are their needs factored in by other industrial nations.

The governments would rather put sick people and those who try to provide for their needs in prison.

The US government has gone so far as to force foreign governments, like Mexico, to attempt to stop trafficking in marijuana. While the FDA grants Big Pharma monopolistic access to marijuana and its products, the US has created an environment in which huge numbers of people are massacred in drug wars, just so that the pharmaceutical corporations can make unconscionable profits.

Big Money-Big Pharma

This is all happening, of course, because of money, very big money. Sold by Bayer Schering in the UK, the NHS pays about £11 per day for each patient's use. That's £330 per month and £3,960 per year. You can, of course, expect the price in the US to be significantly higher, since there is virtually no control over pharmaceutical prices.

Imagine how much cheaper it would be if patients could simply use pot legally!

Of course, saving money has nothing to do with the government's plans. The government in the US, whether the Department of Justice or any other, exists to support the desires—that is, the profits—of corporations, not to better the welfare of the people.

Paul Armentano of NORML, a marijuana reform organization, stated:

The DEA's intent is to expand the federal government's schedule III listing to include pharmaceutical products containing naturally derived formations of THC while simultaneously maintain existing criminal prohibitions on the plant itself.

That, of course, says it all. The US government, along with those of the UK and Spain, and other nations that criminalize marijuana while allowing sales of drugs derived from it, are not acting for the people. They're acting to promote the profits of Big Pharma.

It's Getting Worse

Marijuana is merely the flagship of a process intended to remove personal health freedom in favor of Big Pharma and Big Medicine profits. The process is accelerating. Stevia, a natural and healthy herbal sweetener, is denied to the people, unless it's been adulterated by pharmaceutical practices. The status of this particular herb varies from country to country, but it's illegal in the UK, and access in the US can be difficult.

In the EU, the public's direct access to all medicinal herbs is about to become illegal, unless they've been approved by the state. To gain approval requires significant funding, which is usually available only to large corporations. As a result, in the UK, the approved list currently includes only 81 brands, mostly duplications of each other and adulterated with substances that don't belong in natural products.

In the US, the FDA is targeting natural products that happen to contain natural substances from which drugs have been derived or for which health claims are made. Even something as innocent and harmless as Seville oranges has been targeted!

Whatever your view on marijuana, don't be fooled into believing that the government bans it because of any harm it might do. It's banned even for medical use, even when the people of a state have voted in favor of it. And it's the leading edge of banning many other herbs useful to health so that Big Pharma can have a monopoly on them.

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