Some douchebag on a blog somewhere inquired "If marijuana is useful as medicine, why isn't Big Pharma on board with it?" This was a comment left some time back, so I'll answer it here. There are two reasons the legal drug cartels don't want marijuana legalized:
#1: Profit.
#2: Profit.
#1: Marijuana is not addictive. Period. Full stop.
Now, you can argue that it's psychologically addictive, but people can get hung up on anything. Food, sex, work, psychotherapy...hell, you could even make the case that being devoutly religious is a form of psychological addiction. Regardless, marijuana is not, in any way, physically addictive. What are the withdrawal symptoms? "Dude, I wish we had some more pot." That's pretty much it.
Compare that to most Big Pharma antidepressants. My wife got off of Effexor, and it was three months of absolute hell for her. It scrambled up her brain seven ways from Sunday. In the midst of it, she said, "If this is what heroin withdrawal is like, I understand junkies completely." No, love, it's not like heroin withdrawal. That takes three days, not three months.
That's what they want. They want addiction. They want withdrawal symptoms so horrific you'll never want to get clean. You'll be on their drugs for the rest of your life, and paying them handsomely for it. Which brings us to...
#2: Availability.
With marijuana, you find a strain that works for you. You buy the seeds, put them in dirt, add water and wait. In a couple of months, you have your very own never-ending supply that you never have to pay anyone for ever again.
Where's the profit in that? Big Pharma doesn't want you using something you can grow and make yourself . They want you using their compounds, which have to be synthesized in huge laboratories, and that they're the sole source of.
To answer this guy's question, Big Pharma doesn't want marijuana legal for the exact same reason the other drug cartels don't. It would kill their profits.
C'mon, you really think these companies give a damn what they're doing to you? They're no different than the snake-oil salesmen of centuries past. They want you to buy what they're selling, and damn the side effects. I've seen marijuana help people, and if some folks want to use it as a recreational substance, it's none of your, my, and especially not the government's business. And I'm still waiting for someone to point out where in the Constitution the Feds are given any authority to regulate any drug at all.
Oops, my bad. I was still stuck in that mindset that liberty and the rule of law mattered. Carry on.
