Volunteers won't be told whether they are getting genuine marijuana or dummy joints, Marinol or sugar pills. Then she'll see who eats the most. The job of making marijuana an official prescription medicine would be daunting. Because the stuff cannot be patented, no drug company will pay hundreds of millions for the encyclopedic testing necessary to convince regulators. And then there is that drug delivery system.
Nonsmokers often have trouble inhaling marijuana smoke, which they find harsh.
And it is, after all, a form of smoking, one of the ultimate health taboos. It seems that if these things are indeed useful, we would have to find a way to deliver them in a manner that is prescribable. To many, that means marijuana's real future is its ingredients, THC and the other 60 or so unique compounds called cannabinoids. These are chemicals that pharmaceutical firms can isolate, improve and call their own. These products could offer the health benefits of marijuana, only better, refashioned to avoid pot's unwanted effects and delivered, of course, without smoke.