Drug companies are not trying to stop the legalization of marijuana. Painkiller manufacturers has gotten into a lot of shit for the abuse of their products (some execs almost went to prison and paid $34M in fines personally; see Purdue Pharma [1]. How do they remedy that? By funding anti-drug groups. Unfortunately there are no "bud is ok, but Oxycotin is bad" groups, so they fund the ones that are anti-all-drugs. The main goal of funding these groups is to stop abuse of their own drugs, while looking good doing it.<p>I work in the drug industry. Trust me, none of them consider marijuana a threat. There may be one or two exceptions, but they certainly aren't the companies making narcotic painkillers.<p>[1]<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/business/21pharma.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/business/21pharma.html?_r=...</a>
This kind of indirect monetary "investment" to maintain the moats to your market reminds me a lot of how ridiculously cost effective lobbying can be to companies like Intuit. $10mm/year in lobbying can virtually guarantee that legislation remains in their favor, which blows any kind of product R&D in terms of ROI out of the water.<p>It's frustrating and disheartening to read things like this, and yet the evil business side of me can't help but think, "damn that's evil but so smart of them..." :(
Sounds like they knew what would happen:<p>States with Medical Marijuana Have Fewer Painkiller Deaths
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8245373" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8245373</a>
The drug companies fight against any effective remedy that isn't covered by a patent. Besides marijuana, another example is the substance DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide).<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfoxide#Medicine" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfoxide#Medicine</a><p>If the remedy has any slightest shred of controversy attached to it, opponents can latch on to it and blow it out of proportion.
Pairs well with this book review of Bad Pharma:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8012263" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8012263</a>.
With no single known cure available for a given condition, one of the most useful parameters in case treatment is chosen might just be simple toxicity itself, depending on how the outcomes are judged by the treated, and treator if involved.<p>In corporations which historically benefit enormously from
regulatory and media influence, it should not be unexpected
for them to obfuscate or propagandize to influencers and the public on topics such as harm vs benefit to consumers, especially when the public is becoming threateningly powerful politically on that exact subject.<p>If you are in the toxic materials business, nature may be against you and depending on ethics, a very profitable approach has been shown to be not only playing unfairly but underhandedly tilting the playing field in your favor at the same time.<p>Not like there's any question.
So, the big news here is that pharmaceutical researchers (researching small molecule drugs like THC) are largely funded by companies who earn their money from a large number of small molecule drugs. Vice doesn't actually compare pro-legalizing and anti-legalizing scientists.<p>I'll also get on the record that I would not recommend using THC containing products for pain relief without medical supervision or advice.<p>Don't get me wrong: funding bias is a problem, but it gets overstated. The scientific process has to deal with much worse problems, like personal egos, evil publishing, malstructured career mechanics and outright fraud. Still, "paying for the right results" is a lot harder than it is often taken to be.
The article loses some credibility by saying Zohydro is a new opioid. It's just hydrocodone, without the harmful acetaminophen additive. Nothing special.<p>Is pot an effective painkiller if you need to really think while getting relief? Opiates don't have psychedelic effects or even the general mental impairment of pot.