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FDA Approves First Drug Derived From Marijuana Plant (wsj.com)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved the first prescription drug derived from the marijuana plant, as a treatment for rare forms of epilepsy that primarily afflict children. From a report: The FDA said Monday that it cleared GW Pharmaceuticals's Epidiolex, also known as cannabidiol, to reduce seizures associated with forms of epilepsy known as Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome, in patients 2 years of age and older. Cannabidiol is derived from the cannabis plant, also known as marijuana. U.K.-based GW Pharmaceuticals says the solution, taken by mouth, is made from a proprietary strain of cannabis designed to maximize a therapeutic component while minimizing components that produce euphoria. GW Pharmaceuticals grows the plants in the U.K.
The FDA said Monday that the drug doesn't cause the high that comes from the chemical tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is the main psychoactive component of marijuana. FDA officials also said the drug doesn't appear to have abuse potential, citing minimal reports of euphoria in patients who took the drug in clinical studies. Further reading: StatNews, The Guardian, and FDA.
The FDA said Monday that the drug doesn't cause the high that comes from the chemical tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is the main psychoactive component of marijuana. FDA officials also said the drug doesn't appear to have abuse potential, citing minimal reports of euphoria in patients who took the drug in clinical studies. Further reading: StatNews, The Guardian, and FDA.
Euphoria is bad, MMkay?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Reason #1 is our private prison industry, which wouldn't be profitable if the only people we locked up were actual violent criminals. Pot heads are great because they just quietly do their time.
Bonus reason #3 is that our uneven law enforcement policy allows states to implement defacto segregation by harassing and locking up minorities that show up in the 'wrong' place. Bonus reason #4 is harassing people who get uppity about political issues like the hippy left.
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Trump won the biggest in the US counties most heavily addicted to opiates. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2685627
So then the Federal government should be forced to drop the Schedule C classification.
" is made from a proprietary strain of cannabis"
Full fuckin stop right there.
How is DNA proprietary? If I have two plants at home and they spawn a seed with similar genetics, am I going to get sued for some patent violation?
Minimal reports of euphoria. What a horrible, unacceptable side effect.
Fortunately, the FDA readily approves a ton of psychoactive poisons that destroy your mind and cause tremors, nausea, and ironically, even seizures. Because nobody really wants lasting, definitive relief. What we want is to pay exoribitant prices for price-gouged, ineffective medication to prop up the pharmaceutical & insurance cartels.
Their ability to extract continual payment from the afflicted is worth much more than any cure.
And by first drug, they mean the first one since Marinol, the Schedule III medical grade THC right?
I always tell them to try some hemp underwear. So much better than cotton. If you're a masochist.
You left out reason #0: people don't know how to vote. Basically nobody agrees with Democrats or Republicans, but almost everyone votes for them.
As another user touched on, The Worldwide War Against Euphoria marches on.
"Don't pick that plant."
"Why not? It's safer to use than Alcohol and tobacco!"
"I said don't pick it!"
"But it's a part of nature!"
"Final warning"
[guy picks plant]
"That's it. Now you've done it. You're under arrest!"
If you're depressed, hell maybe if you just fart too much, they'll give you script after script for anti-depressants. But a plant? No! Not unless they can make money out of it and somehow remove any type of euphoria from it.
"citing minimal reports of euphoria in patients who took the drug in clinical studies."
This is, of course, after controlling for the natural euphoria that comes from not having seizures.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
So we go from it being illegal except £10k + a certain amount of security can allow a license to produce. But, the psychoactive substances law meant CBD products came out all over the place. I can go to a local health foods type place and but a range of cos products. But growing weed is illegal, or unlicensed? And if I grew CBD heavy strains and promise to throw away the THC bits then growing is legal? It's all incredibly confused and is set to cost health care providers a fortune got something that literally grows like a weed. It's either very confusing or our governments are both making obvious plays in to investments.
Trojan creating a line of condoms that, "Stops pregnancy and the spread of STDs, all without the pesky euphoria that comes from sexual intercourse!"
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
From a chemical that comes from a plant that does not have any addictive qualities and a person can quit cold turkey if they want to? WOW!
Did you know the reason marijuana is illegal is because of the cotton industry didn't want the hemp industry to happen? Some guy told me that at a concert once. Blew my mind. Hemp is much superior to cotton. That is why people who smoke pot love hemp. They are intensely interested in material science.
DuPont and Nylon; but yes.
The active ingredient in this drug (cannabidiol, CBD) is still listed as a Schedule 1 controlled substance (Cannabis Extracts), and rescheduling it would be a public admission that the plant it is derived from also has medical applications, and itself would then be disqualified for Schedule 1 status.
Will be really interesting how the inter-agency pissing contest over this plays out, now that Big Pharma has some skin in the game...
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Marinol is "dronabinol", a name apparently invented for synthetic THC, which as you noted, is Schedule III, simply because it came from a lab, not a plant.
THC (or any other compound) extracted from an actual cannabis plant is a naughty Schedule I drug.
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Right. Nylon. Potheads are really interested in Nylon. And DuPont.
This is the first serious "medical marijuana" case I've ever seen. The argument that legal marijuana is needed to treat people's medical issues while allowing distribution by stoned out dispensers telling me Hawaiian Blue is great for cataracts because it has a mellow buzz and is pretty strong is just a bs excuse.
I've always viewed the legaiization effort as complete nonsense because of the "medical" marijuana argument. Its like arguing rum should be legalized (if it was illegal) because people need it to sterilize wounds.
It's still evil because Jeff Sessions and the DOJ tells me so
And also the same thing with paper and the lumber industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Big Pharma has long since demonstrated they have no shame. They can easily hold both beliefs. e.g. that Marijuana has no medicinal applications and that this drug treats epilepsy. When money is at stake it's easy to have your cake and eat it too. And there's no shortage of people who are happy to keep Marijuana illegal for their own reasons (tough on crime, racism, fear, indifference, etc). It's easy enough to turn those voters out and get anti-Marijuana folks like Jeff Session in power.
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"... as a treatment for rare forms of epilepsy that primarily afflict children."
So what happens with time?
1 They grow out of the epilepsy
2 It change to a different form in adults
3 It kill most sufferers before adulthood
4 The statement is wrong, it should say onset is in children
Lennox-Gastaut syndrome
No support for 1 or 2, refutes 3 (mortality rate on order of 5% over 10 years).
Dravet syndrome
Refutes 1 and 2.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Trump actually lost so presumably you mean he "lost the least" ... but this is a classic example of correlation having nothing at all to do with causation.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
At the same time, SITSA and SCREEN have been passed in the House and will soon be voted on in the senate. Their ostensible purpose is to get ahead of fentanyl analogs, though of course those are all already illegal as of last year. The only way to stop fentalogs is to convince China to do something about them. The bills would give the AG unprecedented powers to schedule any substance, for any reason, without oversight or review. An amendment to exempt botanicals was voted down in the House. It's prohibitively expensive to study scheduled drugs and even for those with the necessary funding, subject to the whims of the DEA. We wouldn't know anything about CBD if these powers had been in effect in recent decades.
basically this takes what growers have already achieved, creating a medication that is nearly all CBD with little or no THC and nearly impossible to get high from, and made it into a patentable drug that they can now sell at an insane markup and they'll get to use the difficulty of getting it through the federal drug policy as a justification for the high prices
But I eagerly look forward to seeing something stupid about people trying to get prescribed this by claiming to be epileptic children.
We finally found a "medical" reason to grow the stuff! said stoners everywhere.
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So this company gets to slap its name on an existing compound which other companies have been isolating for years, and suddenly they get to make it a prescription drug and get major headlines? CBD has been known to the cannabis community for years, and it's already legal in all 50 states if derived from hemp (though not if derived from cannabis).
Where were all the headlines when companies were selling CBD derived from hemp? Same compound, different source. It doesn't matter what strain it came from, it's still CBD.
What I fear is that corporate America will try and succeed in patenting cannabis such that when it's legal, it will be a pharmaceutical owned by major corporations. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to grow your own or buy from small growers. That's what we need to watch out for and oppose at every turn. Cannabis is both a fantastic medicine, and a great recreational drug. For anyone not aware, it can do an amazing job of lowering blood pressure in those with hypertension.
There is truth to that, but it was bolstered by racism and xenophobia. Marijuana was a drug thought to be smoked by Latin Americans coming North to take our jobs. It was also popular in Jazz circles, music mostly created by African Americans. White America couldn't stand the thought of their sons and daughters smoking pot and associating with blacks and hispanics.
Right. Nylon. Potheads are really interested in Nylon. And DuPont.
No, you vegetable.
DuPont had just invented Nylon. Nylon was used to make rope, like for Navy ships.
Hemp was the traditional fiber for Ropemaking.
DuPont worked behind the scenes to get Pot (and thus also Hemp) "demonized", and eventually made illegal.
1. No more Hemp for rope. No more competition for Nylon.
2. ???
3. DuPont Profits!
Don't believe me: Here's the first reference I could find to this almost forgotten bit of history:
http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/po...
That will be ideal as a treatment for vomiting.
The FDA approved Dronabinol in 1986. Dronabinol is a synthetically produced THC isomer that is chemically identical to the main psychoactive THC isomer in cannabis. It is prescribed to treat anorexia in AIDS patients, and to increase appetite/reduce nausea in people undergoing chemotherapy.
Molecules are molecules, it doesn't matter if you make them in a lab or extract them from a plant, if they're the same chemically and structurally, it doesn't matter. This isn't a l-methamphetamine vs. d-methamphetamine where one of the enantiomers can pass the blood/brain barrier and the other can't, we're talking the exact same molecule in the exact same configuration.
In other words, the FDA admitted that cannabis was medically useful over 30 years ago, they just obfuscated that fact by making a purely arbitrary distinction between THC derived from plants and THC created through a non-biological chemical process.
I don't even have a horse in this race, I just can't stand the fact that a thing is illegal for reasons that have been demonstrated to be untrue over and over again, and when we have an admission straight from one of the people who helped demonize the stuff in the first place that they knew damned well that cannabis was harmless when they started the war on drugs. Not just that, but also that the only reason cannabis was placed on the schedule I list is because they knew they couldn't make it illegal to be black, Jewish, or a "hippie" (aka, "being left of William F. Buckley Jr.) but they could make cannabis illegal, demonize the shit out of it, and then associate it with those groups for their own political gain, including making it much easier to arrest people in those groups. It's a dumb law that has put a bunch of people in prison that don't need to be in prison, which is expensive, and actually creates *more* crime in the long run.
Two things:
1) He won according to the rules all the candidates were bound by, and
2) When talking about individual counties, it is correct to say that he won some by a larger margin than others, regardless of the ultimate outcome.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.