Big pharmaceutical companies don't want cannabis legalized, but want profit from it.

Big pharma wants to keep marijuana illegal for people to consume as they wish, but they aren't fools and see the potential it has to make billions in medicines. Let me be clear. No pharmaceutical company can legally profit from marijuana-derived drugs since it is illegal federally to produce it without federal oversight which is almost if not impossible to follow. So it's counter-intuitive to support it's continued ban for medical purposes. Once the federal deregulation/reclassification of cannabis has changed from a schedule one (no medical potential) to one with medical potential, there will be enormous potential for profits from isolation, production of cannabinoids. In other words, we cannot study it and prove it's effectiveness if it is illegal to do so. That being said, many pharmaceutical companies in other countries outside of the U.S. are moving forward with their cannabis derivatives and patents. U.S. pharmaceuticals naturally want in on the action, so no, they do not want medical cannabis illegal. The American Society for Pharmacology and Experiemental Therapuetics has named the endocannabinoid system as an emerging target of pharmacotherapy. (1) But the logic is, larger pharmaceutical companies would naturally not want something legally available, or recreationally available that people can grow for free and less apt to pay a fee to see a doctor, and again pay a fee for a prescribed drug. It would be almost impossible to prove that pharmaceutical companies are directly financially supporting political campaigns and bribing state and national legislators to keep cannabis illegal, but there are a number of examples and documents that suggest or imply this is happening that I will be providing. However I believe the corroborating evidence makes it difficult to suggest that pharmaceutical companies would not have some vested interest in how the cannabis laws will work out, many of which are still to come. The knowledge and experience of our federal government's history of corruption and untruthfulness to it's people taken into consideration, we should be more inclined that citizens know the truth of such matters and make reference to them when available. But let me be clear, I do not wish to go after pharmaceutical companies themselves for their ability to capitalize on a new drug. I just want US citizens to be aware of what is really going on. I believe the plant should be free for citizens to cultivate for their own purposes. I fear that, as I've stated, if U.S. laws are swayed to benefit the large pharmaceutical corporations and keep marijuana illegal, people will be forced to pay for what is otherwise free. How are the U.S. laws swayed? In the Supreme Court's 2010 decision, political campaigns can be funded without limits by nameless corporate donors. Until this can be overturned, corporations are considered "citizens" and can greatly influence congress. (4) Why would cannabinoids, the properties of the cannabis plant, have so much potential for so many ailments like cancer, Crohn's disease, epilepsy and many others? Again, this is a difficult question to answer with credible, factual information since we are banned from studying it. But there are quite a few promising studies completed by our own national institutes of health on the wonders of cannabis by our own National Institutes of Health. One suggested vaporized cannabis can control pain. (2) The federal government owns the patent on marijuana, and states "Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidiol, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH.sub.3, and COCH.sub.3." (3) So, as one can see, there are tremendous opportunities to continue to research these complex natural compounds found in a plant and develop medicines that have tremendous potential to help millions if not billions in the world today since cannabinoids are already helping those where other drugs cannot. (5) 1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 2. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov... 3. US Patent 6630507 http://patft.uspto.gov... 4. http://www.opensecrets.org... 5. http://www.medicaldaily.com... Congress quietly ends federal government's ban on medical marijuana - December 2014 LA Times Article http://www.latimes.com...