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Replacement for Dice in Monopoly Due To Rationing During World War II (from Wikimedia Commons)
It may be 4/20 but the not so fabulous news may be that after all that work done by activists to break barriers to the legalization and even decriminalization of cannabis, the US government has simply made the markets safe just in time for their complete capture by Big Pharma. Remember the JustSayNow campaign and the review of Sativex, a liquified form of marijuana from the British prescription drug maker GW Pharmaceuticals? Well according to Kyle Daly in “Is Big Pharma set to corner the American market on medical marijuana?” (The American Independent, Apr. 19, 2011), GW Pharmaceuticals announced a licensing agreement with drug giant Novartis last week and the Japanese international prescription drug company, Otsuka, has just wrapped Phase II clinical trials for GW of Sativex.
Otsuka declined to comment to The American Independent on how close Sativex is to FDA approval or how far along the Phase III trials are, but Phase III is typically the final step in a drug’s path to pharmacies. Even getting to Phase III means the FDA has signed off on earlier test results and needs to see them confirmed in a large-scale study before advancing the drug.
Did I hear the gnashing of teeth? Wasn’t it coincidentally only last week that Washington state Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) received a letter from the Department of Justice “warning of the potential for criminal prosecutions of state employees who engage in the production of medical marijuana” although it is now legally authorized in the state? Yeah, I noticed that too.
36 Comments
Unbelievable. I suppose this explains the real push against legalized pot. They didn’t have a way to profit from it yet.
I think it’s very transparent and it’s crap. It’s not the job of the USG to put corporate profits before the interests of the constituents.
More ridiculousness simply protecting a slew of corporations and their profits (hat tip Suzanne).
“OK Passes Bill Providing for Life Sentence for Converting Pot to Hashish” (TalkLeft.Com, by Jeralyn Merritt, Apr. 21, 2011)
It certainly isn’t. This seems yet another example of how corporate profits have become priority in this country.
This is a serious blow to state level legalization efforts. If this pharmaceutical crap comes out it will allow the conservative state governments to pull back and say “look! There’s a safe medical alternative!”. Then they’ll crack down on pot even harder to protect the profits of the drug companies.
This is just fugged.
Sure looks like a deliberate political sabotage effort. Note that it’s a British and Japanese company swooping in. No American jobs here! Nothing to see, move along …
Sick and twisted. I tell you, the Pharma Corps will do anything to keep the public from using its own natural resources instea of their aspirin and such!
Speak Easy, my friend. ;-)
This is pretty amazing. Next, we’ll have the commercial brand recalled because the amount of pesticides used on it are killer level.
I would argue with Big Oil/Big Chemical/Big Pharma that just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I am recommending folks read EmptyWheel’s United States of Monsanto (Apr. 15, 2011) and “Blackwater Served as Monsanto’s Intelligence Arm” (Sept. 15, 2010) just for starters.
Oooppss! EW is awesome. But even she can’t publish posts already dated this coming Sept. 2nd post linked is dated Sept. 15, 2010.
And you’re probably right about the dollar signs in Big Pharma’s irises. Given our corporatocracy, this makes sense of the DOJ’s recent marijuana raids. Hand, meet glove. I’d wondered why these seemed to be booming.
Oh you are referring to the trick of embedding pesticide genes in the modified organism that then releases the pesticides as in the instance of GMO corn? Increase in environmental toxicity– therefore human and animal toxicity– is a side effects of that technique.
{ snip }
(excerpt from "GM maize ‘has polluted rivers across the United States’,” The Independent (UK), Sept. 28, 2010)
Recommended.
Great post, thanks.
Just say “No!” to GMO cannabis!
That, too. But the carcinogenic quality of tobacco has been tracked back, in part, to the insecticide level in the field-grown crops, a result of ‘protecting’ that crop from losses to insects by use of insecticides.
Of course, we wouldn’t want to take advantage of the natural properties of the plant in protecting itself from insect pests.
Thanks, mzchief. recc’d.
Thank you for catching my transcription mistake on the citation, greenharper. I fixed it. :-)
Donald Rumsfeld is just one example of your point.
The industrial scale of human hubris does have a cost.
Ah, cancer from chronic toxicity.
We also know:
(excerpt from “Pesticides & Wildlife-Tobacco,” North Carolina State University, Feb. 1992)
we need to go on the offence and plant plant everywhere,and i mean everywhere,then watch as they run around trying in vein to erradicate the devil weed,most of the country will grow cannabis start early in the north like tomatoes,if everyone that smokes grows afew plants[ that is all it would take to overwelm the darkside.there is lots of info on growing gorrilla style.
Notice the prior confiscation patterns. Preserving the genetic integrity of the plant is definitely a good idea. I just don’t want planes swooping out of the sky spraying toxins everywhere as the “authorities” go into full-on control freak mode as that will make for more sick children, mothers and elders than we already have.
If aspirin was a recent “discovery”, just hitting the market today, we would all be paying a co-pay of $10/15 per month for 30 tablets.
The pharmaceutical industry has no shame and has put profits above everything.
“Industry” doesn’t have a problem of simply lock-boxing innovations or withholding (“keeping off the markets”) given its corrupt relationship with law makers, government officials and corporate media representatives (e.g. “Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing.Net discusses losing gamble to rigged market capitalism,” Apr. 14, 2011). This activity also includes outrageous, secret international trade deals that keep getting exposed (e.g. “Cory Doctorow on fraudulent intellectual property debate,” Apr. 14, 2011).
This might look OT but I really don’t think it is. The US is purposefully being de-industrialized as EmptyWheel has pointed out repeatedly in favor of the remaining large-scale agricultural production which is entirely controlled by transnational corporations, heavily subsidized by the US tax payer and highly petro-chemical dependent with no change in sight (the bold is my emphasis):
(excerpt from “US farm companies charged with human trafficking,” Apr. 21, 2011)
Your comment at 9:58 pm:
“It’s not the job of the USG to put corporate profits before the interests of the constituents.”
I would posit this is exactly the mission statement and purpose of our present theocratic, fascist state.
Thanks for your hard work and insights.
Bringing this to light and constructive change can’t be done without you! Thank you for your observations, voicing your concerns and working to correct this situation for the welfare of us all. We are all in this together!
Yeah, slimey bastards. One rationale, of course, will be that the prescription versions can carefully control how much THC the liquid or tablets contain. Feh!
Remember how hard the push was to make supplements illegal under the guise of of consumer protection? They found tons of products that actually didn’t contain what the package advertized, which is a whole different subject. That could be controlled by inspectors. Oh right–we don’t DO inspectors…
“It’s not the job of the USG to put corporate profits before the interests of the constituents.”
Actually, that has been the job of the US government, at least for the past several decades. Looking after the interests of the people or the constitution, not so much.
You wrote:
Technically “yes” on the ability to control the THC content but THC is the really kind of déclassé from my research. The other 66 cannabinoids are much more compelling. Looks like the delivery form would need to be liquid (e.g. Sativex is a treacle or syrup). I don’t have at my finger tips the data on how the compounds degrade once they are extracted from the plant, are sitting on shelves in syrup (in an amber bottle?) or gel cap form, or if exposed to air and sunlight.
You also wrote:
Yeah I have first-hand experience from working on the regulatory side in air and water monitoring both from a commercial and government standpoint. I know the level of sophisticated “administrative” fraud possible and actual. Further, I remember the 1980s and the increasingly organized and sophisticated attempts to pharmaceuticalize food and nutrition (e.g. “nutriceutials”). This spawned speech gagging laws (mid 1980s) for real people while fictitious persons called corporations could make sh#t up and pump it into the collective consciousness via the media (TV drug direct marketing, 1992). Sorry but chalk dust
TUMSisn’t and never will be a source of calcium for humans despite what the ads say. And as for yesterday’s revelation of “several types of human gut” (Agence France-Presse, Apr. 20, 2011), I find it pathetic that it is somehow “news” in the US. I spoke about some of this with scientists who knew about such realities since the 1940s as they had received training in Europe and Latin America or are indigenous medicine folk from other countries. Animal husbandry has known about this for a long time as breeding and medical manipulation (plant and animal genetics) is huge $s. From my POV, it’s like the US reached an apex in the early 1990s and the rich-sters decided to simply systematically strip (“privatize”) it all away while trying to apply a cultural lobotomy over the span of a few decades. Here’s another appalling example of the constant disinformation campaign pointed out by Mousseau:(excerpt from “25 years on, Chernobyl fallout still an eco-hazard,” Agence France-Presse, Apr. 18, 2011)
*GAH!* { forehead and fists bang on desk }
I’ve already reached the point of wanting to terminate the corporate entity– here in the US and across national boundaries– as it simply has become a pandemic like Ebola or AIDS. Just slap a biohazard sign on them and eradicate the danged things. Of course we bring to justice their master minds, too.
Allow me to put my financial thoughts in a nut shell: ‘Money, money, money makes the world go around!”
Always been that way, and until the last human life is extinguished will always be that way.
Sad, but true.
Again, the best to you and yours.
The bottom line: A government sanctioned method for the production of a harmless drug and the government’s sanctioned drug delivery system vs. Mother Nature and citizens enjoying harmless weeds that grow in the garden.
It’s great to live in a free society.
Jeebus, I hear you. I can’t help think about that Neil Young protest song, “Rockin’ In The Free World.”
mzchief,
mj is not my thing but I saw the headline for this story on another site and was not the slightest bit surprised. I left you the following comment on my diary (thanks for all of yours!)
My pleasure. I am a bit surprised the Kiwis would allow such a thing. If you see any links, ship them my way. I left you a comment on this on your bee thread.
From Vancouver, BC-based news site:
{ snip }
(excerpt from “Medical marijuana dispensary opens in Burnaby; Emery denied transfer to Canada,” TheTyee.Com, by Tom Sandborn, Apr. 18, 2011)
This is a shame and it sounds familiar. Can any legal eagle make comment on agreements that might be in place between US and Canada regarding cannabis?
We already have ads of happy, care-free fishermen in the Gulf – all the while denying the public the opportunity to research the turtle and dolphin carcasses on the beach.
The real business of life is just one big PR gloss-over to them, isn’t it?
So here is a food-for-thought quote that is about the values-clash of two different societies (this is *not* about race). Given all the sh#t we “modern people” have created for ourselves to the point of a life-shortened, genetically-damaged “future,” which values system should we lean toward?
- John (Fire) Lame Deer (Sioux Lakota, born 1900 to 1903 and died 1976)
What a character, that Lame Deer, eh?!