New Study Shows Why Big Pharma Hates Medical Marijuana (washingtonpost.com)

HughPickens.com writes: Christopher Ingraham writes in the Washington Post that a new study shows that painkiller abuse and overdose are significantly lower in states with medical marijuana laws and that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful and deadly prescription narcotics. The researchers "found that, in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law... In medical-marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti-nausea doses and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication. But most strikingly, the typical physician in a medical-marijuana state prescribed 1,826 fewer doses of painkillers in a given year."

[P]ainkiller drug companies "have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funneling dollars to groups, such as the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, that oppose marijuana legalization..."

Comments

Companies shouldn't have political power

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, their voices need to be heard, but companies ought not to become politically powerful entities. They are there to make money, produce goods, and make our lives better, not to tell us how to live.

Re:Companies shouldn't have political power

[Applehu Akbar]

Companies will have power as long as they can make political donations.

Re:Companies shouldn't have political power

[ShanghaiBill]

The solution is for the people to wake up and pay attention to what their government is doing.

Any "solution" that is premised on changing human nature is not a solution at all.

Re:Companies shouldn't have political power

[phantomfive]

You do not know what my best interest is.

There's a 99% chance that your best interest doesn't involve letting politicians get bribed. Some things are obvious for the vast majority of us.

Re: Companies shouldn't have political power

[TechyImmigrant]

Yes. Moderates like Obama have very little opposition.

But he got a 'half way to universal healthcare measure' through congress, where a universal healthcare measure would not get through.
With luck the next administration will get though the 'single payer' option, which will in the style of Zeno's paradox get 50% of the remaining way to universal healthcare.

In time an incremental approach works. The all-in-one approach rarely succeeds.

I'll take an pragmatic incrementer over someone calling for a revolution that will never happen.
 

Re:Companies shouldn't have political power

[Applehu Akbar]

"And the solution is?"

I like the proposal that has been floated to make all politicians wear their corporate sponsor logos on their suits every day, like NASCAR drivers.

Re:Companies shouldn't have political power

[ShanghaiBill]

*shrug* then there's no solution.

Sure there is. Some countries are far more corrupt than others. But the difference is not in the people. People in Venezuela are no different from people in Denmark. The difference is in the laws and institutions. In corrupt countries, these are designed to facilitate corruption. In clean countries, they are designed to inhibit it.

In America, when I apply for a business license, the law says that the clerk "will issue" when I pay the standard fee, which is posted on a public website. In corrupt countries, the clerk "may issue" and has much more discretion to delay and obstruct. In America, the clerk sits at a public window, and my transaction is in full view of the other people waiting in line. When I applied for a business license in China, I was escorted by the clerk to a private office, where "expediting fees" were discussed out of sight and hearing of the next applicant. The system there is designed to be corrupt.

Re:Can't wait

[The Real Dr John]

Yeah, like I said, we are going to need new laws, not new "free trade" agreements. The criminal corporate overlords need to be taxed into submission, broken up into smaller companies and regulated until they scream Uncle!

Not a good track record

[XXongo]

Where are big pharma's recreational drugs? The ones they engineer from the ground up to provide a pleasant, short-term euphoria with designed-in features to prevent overdose, mitigate overconsumption and abuse, and cheap enough that they could be priced lower than mass-produced marijuana?

Drug manufacturers have a poor track record on that.

In the 1800s, they noticed that opium worked as an analgesic, but had people using it simply for pleasure. So they engineered a new drug to just have the analgesic properties, and named it "morphine."

That didn't work. It had a bad side effect: people who took opium or morphine experienced a side effect where they started craving it, called "opium appetite". So, pharmacies thought, well, we need to find a deliver it without the people eating it-- it could be delivered directly to the body, so people wouldn't have the craving (how could you have a craving for something you don't even taste?) So they invented needle injection to solve the opium appetite problem.

That didn't work. Opium and morphine both turned out to be addictive, so they developed a new drug to solve that. This one they name it "heroin".

That turned out to be even worse. So they went completely synthetic to make a new painkiller which didn't trace to the opium flower: Oxycodone.

That turned out to be even more addictive...