BOTTOM LINE

All of the praise of marijuana's powers to alleviate such a wide
variety of ills merely serves as evidence of why the power of the
corporate - read pharmaceutical - medical establishment uses its
lobbying influence to insure that it will not compete with their products.

Look to the bottom line. In Australia and some European countries,
strains of periwinkle are prescribed as effective cancer-fighters; in
this country, however, scores of components of periwinkle have been
extracted from their plant source and registered and marketed as
cancer-fighting drugs. Not that this approach saves more lives, but
it does effectively give monopolies (through patent) to
pharmeceutical companies - for much higher prices than you'll see in
your local health shop! (Look: The bottom line!)

It's rather like not selling a plate of food to someone who's
starving when you've got the only-game-in-town, and can sell them -
by the spoonful - enough to keep body and soul together ... till the
next payment.

For some, the top 1 percent, it doesn't get any better!

- -Bruce Saunders, Detroit