PRESCRIPTION HIGHS

Pharmaceutical Companies Growing Pot Is No Longer a Hippie
Conspiracy

Despite the U.S. government's staunch opposition to medical-cannabis
farms, the feds have begun licensing a whole lot of large, legal pot
grows throughout the country. But this weed is not for cannabis
dispensaries and their patients. It's for mega drug companies.

The Drug Enforcement Administration explained last week that 55
unnamed companies now hold licenses to grow cannabis in the United
States, a fact that contradicts the widespread belief that there is
only one legal pot farm in America, operated under DEA supervision and
for research purposes. It appears as if the upswing in federally
approved pot farming is about feeding the need of pharmaceutical
companies, who want to produce a generic version of THC pill Marinol
and at least one other cannabis-based pill for a wide variety of new
uses.

In other words, if big corporations grow cannabis with the government
and put it in a pill, it's medicine. But if you grow it at home or at
a city-permitted pot farm and then put it in a vaporizer, it's a
federal crime.

"They've got to realize, as a political issue, this is going to raise
a red flag," argued Kris Hermes, spokesman for medical-marijuana lobby
Americans for Safe Access. "Here we have companies cultivating
marijuana on a mass scale to produce generic Marinol. It's going to
force the government to answer more questions than it wants to."

It's a weird piece of news that comes at a strange and contradictory
time for the drug war. As U.S. attorneys send threatening letters to
states and cities warning them against "commercial cultivation" of
marijuana, the DEA is quietly handing out licenses for commercial
cultivation.

The schism has its roots in the '70s and the drug war under President
Richard Nixon, who ignored his staff's recommendations and named
cannabis one of the most dangerous drugs in America under the
Controlled Substances Act. Cannabis has remained a so-called "Schedule
I" controlled substance, alongside heroin.

Today, 16 states defy the Controlled Substances Act and allow
qualified patients to access the drug.

In 2002, activists again tried to reschedule the cannabis plant.
Today, they still await word on their petition, which is why they're
attempting in a Washington, D.C., circuit court to get the DEA to rule
on the matter.

"The federal government's strategy has been delay, delay, delay," said
Joe Elford, chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access, in an emailed
statement last week.

But while the government has stalled on rescheduling a cheap,
patentless pain remedy with fewer toxic side effects than Advil or
Tylenol, regulators are proving to be more than happy to accommodate
pharmaceutical company's efforts to muscle in on pot.

Marinol, however, has never worked well with cancer patients, doctors
say. Effects vary widely. With at least 66 different cannabinoids in
smoked pot, patients report THC-only Marinol doesn't provide the same
relief.

And so, drug companies want to bring generic THC and CBD to new
markets and have requested that the DEA allow them to grow pot and put
organic THC and CBD in pills, according to DEA records posted online
last fall. But that requires the DEA to move organic THC down from
Schedule I, where it is now, to Schedule III, where synthetic-THC
Marinol currently is.

The federal government has already boosted its marijuana production
capability by 900 percent, to 4.5 million grams, according documents
obtained by Americans for Safe Access. The most famous federally
approved pot grower, Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly, has also testified that he
has begun legally selling THC extracted from his Mississippi pot farm
to the drug company Mallinckrodt.

Big Pharma's move on the pot industry isn't some 40-year-old hippie
conspiracy theory. It's here.