I recently attended the 40th reunion, if I remember correctly, of the bone marrow recipients at City of Hope. It happened to fall almost exactly 2 years after my transplant.
I bring this because if it had been up to Congress, I don't know if it would have been possible. Why? Because it's really the stem cells in the marrow that made it work, and we all know how politics prevented stem cell development for years.
I really don't know if even today researchers are free to work with embryonic stem cells, but fortunately in most applications adult stem cells work, and it was stem cells, not marrow that I received.
I bring this up because I believe this has definite parallels to where things stand on cannabis. While other nations have openly endorsed the use of cannabis in at least limited way, we as a nation go kicking and screaming into the future.
The good news is that in Stem Cells, I believe we've become world leaders in spite of our late adoption of the technology, and in time I believe the same could apply to the beneficial use of cannabis.
That said, I believe that tremendous success is possible without U.S. sales at all for OWCP, as well as other products being developed by other companies. In drugs, last I saw statistics, the U.S. represented 35% of revenue from drug sales, yet we only represent something like 5% of the world population. I suspect if you really want to look at why our healthcare costs are so high, this might be a good place to start.
In my mind, cannabis based products may cut our use of certain other drugs, but on the other hand, it may supplement others and actually increase their sales. I would suspect that Big Pharma is telling our Congressmen not to issue blanket approval for cannabis, but they know the American people won't stand up for banning it where it's already legal. Big Pharma is one of the biggest contributor's to Congress, so it's hard to say when they'll act for the people, instead of their pocketbook, but i think it will happen before all 50 States make it legal.
The FDA in the mean time doesn't really prevent cannabis based products from reaching the market as long as they don't require drug approval. Products essentially derived naturally only need to be shown to be safe, however, if a company want's its products paid for by insurance companies, the best course is by gaining FDA drug approval. That said, we've also heard about courts ordering insurance companies to pay for certain cannabis based products, and I suspect that in time both our cream and sublingual tablets could get such rulings.
I believe that the V.A. might be the key to acceptance of our sublingual tablet for PTSD as they appear to already be open to smoking marijuana in some cases. I believe the sublingual tablet will become a preferable method of administering cannabis, and may get V.A. support well before FDA acceptance as a drug has been established.
Gary
I bring this because if it had been up to Congress, I don't know if it would have been possible. Why? Because it's really the stem cells in the marrow that made it work, and we all know how politics prevented stem cell development for years.
I really don't know if even today researchers are free to work with embryonic stem cells, but fortunately in most applications adult stem cells work, and it was stem cells, not marrow that I received.
I bring this up because I believe this has definite parallels to where things stand on cannabis. While other nations have openly endorsed the use of cannabis in at least limited way, we as a nation go kicking and screaming into the future.
The good news is that in Stem Cells, I believe we've become world leaders in spite of our late adoption of the technology, and in time I believe the same could apply to the beneficial use of cannabis.
That said, I believe that tremendous success is possible without U.S. sales at all for OWCP, as well as other products being developed by other companies. In drugs, last I saw statistics, the U.S. represented 35% of revenue from drug sales, yet we only represent something like 5% of the world population. I suspect if you really want to look at why our healthcare costs are so high, this might be a good place to start.
In my mind, cannabis based products may cut our use of certain other drugs, but on the other hand, it may supplement others and actually increase their sales. I would suspect that Big Pharma is telling our Congressmen not to issue blanket approval for cannabis, but they know the American people won't stand up for banning it where it's already legal. Big Pharma is one of the biggest contributor's to Congress, so it's hard to say when they'll act for the people, instead of their pocketbook, but i think it will happen before all 50 States make it legal.
The FDA in the mean time doesn't really prevent cannabis based products from reaching the market as long as they don't require drug approval. Products essentially derived naturally only need to be shown to be safe, however, if a company want's its products paid for by insurance companies, the best course is by gaining FDA drug approval. That said, we've also heard about courts ordering insurance companies to pay for certain cannabis based products, and I suspect that in time both our cream and sublingual tablets could get such rulings.
I believe that the V.A. might be the key to acceptance of our sublingual tablet for PTSD as they appear to already be open to smoking marijuana in some cases. I believe the sublingual tablet will become a preferable method of administering cannabis, and may get V.A. support well before FDA acceptance as a drug has been established.
Gary
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