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By Paul Armentano, AlterNet. Posted July 5, 2008.

While the the American Medical Association claims pot has no medical value, Big Pharma is busy getting patents for marijuana products.

The US government’s longstanding denial of medical marijuana research and use is an irrational and morally bankrupt public policy. On this point, few Americans disagree. As for the question of “why” federal officials maintain this inflexible and inhumane policy, well that’s another story

One of the more popular theories seeking to explain the Feds’ seemingly inexplicable ban on medical pot goes like this: Neither the US government nor the pharmaceutical industry will allow for the use of medical marijuana because they can’t patent it or profit from it.

It’s an appealing theory, yet I’ve found it to be neither accurate nor persuasive. Here’s why.

First, let me state the obvious. Big Pharma is busily applying for — and has already received — multiple patents for the medical properties of pot. 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 (pdf), “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 medical value, Big Pharma is in a frenzy to bring dozens of new, cannabis-based medicines to market.

Not all of these medicines will be synthetic pills either. Most notably, GW Pharmaceutical’s oral marijuana spray, Sativex, is a patented standardized dose of natural cannabis extracts. (The extracts, primarily THC and the non-psychoactive, anxiolytic compound CBD, are taken directly from marijuana plants grown at an undisclosed, company warehouse.)

Does Big Pharma’s sudden and growing interest in the research and development of pot-based medicines mean that the industry is proactively supporting marijuana prohibition? Not if they know what’s good for them. Let me explain.

First, any and all cannabis-based medicines must be granted approval from federal regulatory bodies such as the US Food and Drug Administration — a process that remains as much based on politics as it is on scientific merit. Chances are that a government that is unreasonably hostile toward the marijuana plant will also be unreasonably hostile toward sanctioning cannabis-based pharmaceuticals.

A recent example of this may be found in the Medicine and Health Products Regulatory Agency’s recent denial of Sativex as a prescription drug in the United Kingdom. (Sativex’s parent company, GW Pharmaceuticals, is based in London.) In recent years, British politicians have taken an atypically hard-line against the recreational use of marijuana — culminating in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s declaration that today’s pot is now of “lethal quality.” (Shortly thereafter, Parliament elected to stiffen criminal penalties on the possession of the drug from a verbal warning to up to five years in jail.) In such an environment is it any wonder that British regulators have steadfastly refused to legalize a pot-based medicine, even one with an impeccable safety record like Sativex? Conversely, Canadian health regulators — who take a much more liberal view toward the use of natural cannabis and oversee its distribution to authorized patients — recently approved Sativex as a prescription drug.

Of course, gaining regulatory approval is only half the battle. The real hurdle for Big Pharma is finding customers for its product. Here again, a culture that is familiar with and educated to the use therapeutic cannabis is likely going to be far more open to the use of pot-based medicines than a population still stuck in the grip of “Reefer Madness.”

Will those patients who already have first-hand experience with the use of medical pot switch to a cannabis-based pharmaceutical if one becomes legally available? Maybe not, but these individuals comprise only a fraction of the US population. Certainly many others will — including many older patients who would never the desire to try or the access to obtain natural cannabis. Bottom line: regardless of whether pot is legal or not, cannabis-based pharmaceuticals will no doubt have a broad appeal.

But wouldn’t the legal availability of pot encourage patients to use fewer pharmaceuticals overall? Perhaps, though likely not to any degree that adversely impacts Big Pharma’s bottom line. Certainly most individuals in the Netherlands, Canada, and in California — three regions where medical pot is both legal and easily accessible on the open market — use prescription drugs, not cannabis for their ailments. Further, despite the availability of numerous legal healing herbs and traditional medicines such as Echinacea, Witch Hazel, and Eastern hemlock most Americans continue to turn to pharmaceutical preparations as their remedies of choice.

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. But, as the private sector continues to move forward with research into the safety and efficacy of marijuana-based pharmaceuticals, it will become harder and harder for the government and law enforcement to maintain their absurd and illogical policy of total pot prohibition.

Of course, were it not for advocates having worked for four decades to legalize medical cannabis, it’s unlikely that anyone — most especially the pharmaceutical industry — would be turning their attention toward the development and marketing of cannabis-based therapeutics. That said, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for any royalty checks.

Oh yeah, and as for those who claim that the US government can’t patent medical pot, check out the assignee for US Patent #6630507.

__________________________________________________ _____

Inventor(s)

* Hampson, Aidan J.
* Axelrod, Julius
* Grimaldi, Maurizio

Assignee

* The United States of America as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services

Application
No. 09/674028 filed on 02/02/2001

Current US Class
514/454Tricyclo ring system having the hetero ring as one of the cyclos

Field of Search
514/454Tricyclo ring system having the hetero ring as one of the cyclos

Examiners
Primary: Weddington, Kevin E.

Attorney, Agent or Firm

* Klarquist Sparkman, LLP

US Patent References
2304669, 4876276, (3S-4S)-7-hydroxy-?6 -tetrahydrocannabinols
Issued on: 10/24/1989
Inventor: Mechoulam, et al.5227537, Method for the production of 6,12-dihydro-6-hydroxy-cannabidiol and the use thereof for the production of trans-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol
Issued on: 07/13/1993
Inventor: Stoss, et al.5284867, NMDA-blocking pharmaceutical compositions
Issued on: 02/08/1994
Inventor: Kloog, et al.5434295, Neuroprotective pharmaceutical compositions of 4-phenylpinene derivatives and certain novel 4-phenylpinene compounds
Issued on: 07/18/1995
Inventor: Mechoulam, et al.5462946, Nitroxides as protectors against oxidative stress
Issued on: 10/31/1995
Inventor: Mitchell, et al.5512270, Method of inhibiting oxidants using alkylaryl polyether alcohol polymers
Issued on: 04/30/1996
Inventor: Ghio, et al.5521215, NMDA-blocking pharmaceuticals
Issued on: 05/28/1996
Inventor: Mechoulam, et al.5538993, Certain tetrahydrocannabinol-7-oic acid derivatives
Issued on: 07/23/1996
Inventor: Mechoulam, et al.5635530, (3S,4S)-delta-6-tetrahydrocannabinol-7-oic acids and derivatives thereof, processors for their preparation and pharmaceutical compositions containing them
Issued on: 06/03/1997
Inventor: Mechoulam, et al.5696109, Synthetic catalytic free radical scavengers useful as antioxidants for prevention and therapy of disease
Issued on: 12/09/1997
Inventor: Malfroy-Camine, et al.6410588Use of cannabinoids as anti-inflammatory agents
Issued on: 06/25/2002
Inventor: Feldmann, et al.

International class
A61K 31/35 (20060101)

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US ID: Column: Those Old Problem Children
by Dick Dorworth, (25 Jun 2008) Idaho Mountain Express Idaho

When Albert Hofmann died in April at the age of 102 at his home in Switzerland, he would have been unknown outside the scientific community had it not been for what he affectionately called his “problem child,” LSD–lysergic acid diethylamide-25, which he discovered/invented/synthesized in 1938 in the process of looking for medicinal uses of a fungus found on rye, wheat and other grains. He was a Swiss scientist in the traditional mold searching for ways to improve human life and he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations in unexpected ways. LSD deeply altered the lives of millions of people and, thereby, the course of human events.

LSD has been profoundly misunderstood and demonized by non-cognoscenti, seriously abused by some who could be called cognoscenti and banned for many years in much of the world. Hofmann’s problem child strikes terror into the quaking hearts and fearful souls of those authorities who mistake control for order and who quiver with rage or uncertainty at questions ( or chemicals ) that challenge their certainty about what is what.

Psychedelics were well known by the time Hofmann discovered LSD, but LSD was some 10,000 times more powerful than mescaline. Through the 1940s and 1950s, LSD created a revolution in psychiatry. It was used successfully in the treatment of neurosis, psychosis and depression. Some 40,000 people underwent psychedelic therapy, perhaps most notably the actor Cary Grant, who received some 60 LSD psychotherapy sessions and said of them, “I have been born again.” Aldous Huxley requested an injection of LSD on his deathbed. And many psychotherapists took the drug along with their patients, a fact not noted nearly enough.

Even though it was a problem child, Hofmann, who took LSD hundreds of times, never gave up his belief in its goodness and usefulness as a “medicine for the soul.” He never believed in it as a pleasure drug for the masses. He said, “As long as people fail to truly understand psychedelics and continue to use them as pleasure drugs, and fail to appreciate the very deep psychic experience they may induce, then their medical use will be held back.”

Like many others–perhaps including some reading these words–at a certain point he realized he no longer had a use for LSD. He turned to and recommended to others older methods of attaining “extraordinary states of consciousness”–breathing techniques, yoga, fasting, dance, art, meditation. He said, “LSD brings about a reduction of intellectual powers in favor of an emotional experience of the world. It can help to refill our consciousness with this feeling of wholeness and being one with nature.” Which would seem to indicate a key element of any “extraordinary state of consciousness” is nothing more complicated than connecting the heart to the brain.

LSD was made illegal in the U.S. in 1967 and despite its successful use in psychotherapy for the previous more than 20 years the DEA holds that it has no medical benefits. Its potential for abuse as what Hofmann termed one of the “pleasure drugs” is well established, as, contrary to the rationale for its legal standing, is its beneficial medical use.

Another problem child in the pharmacopoeia of medicine is Cannabis sativa, more commonly known as marijuana. It has been used for thousands of years for a variety of purposes, including medicinal and spiritual. As hemp it has been used in the making of fiber goods including rope, many different sturdy woven products, oil, paper, textiles and fuel. Hemp is grown, harvested and used well in virtually every country in the world except the United States. The illegal marijuana has certainly been ( and is as you read these words ) used and abused as a pleasure drug, but its use, abuse, destructiveness and danger to the social order pales in comparison to that of the legal drug alcohol and, for that matter, several others.

The marijuana laws of America, unlike marijuana itself, have damaged and destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of otherwise innocent people, flooded the jails with people who could not be termed criminal in a rational social order, created a huge illegal industry of enormous profits to a criminal hierarchy far more dangerous to society than the most pleasure seeking of their customers, including those seeking relief from the symptoms of AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and the incessant pain of many ailments.

The thing is, those old problem children are not going to go away. Though this newspaper and many of its readers do not support the legalization and control of marijuana and/or LSD the way alcohol and nicotine are controlled, this writer and, as the city of Hailey recently evinced ( twice ), many other readers do. Part of the rationale behind such thinking is perhaps best illustrated by a Florida report published this month that analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide in 2007. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphatemines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids–strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin–caused 2,328. Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466–fewer than cocaine ( 843 ) but more than methamphetamine ( 25 ) and marijuana ( 0 ).

Res ipsa loquitur.

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