re: #452 000G

That one I don’t quite understand. Wouldn’t they be very fit to get into the biz themselves and profit from it?

No, pot is more like agriculture than it is pharma. The methods of making it better are more suited to people who know how to grow great cross-strains than it is great pharmacologists. THC is not the only cannabanoid in marijuana and so if they wanted to make a synthetic version they’d have to research all the others as well, and then do a complicated process.

Otherwise, marijuana doesn’t need to be processed, and, even if you do (into hash or oil) it takes a minimal amount of processing, again more similar to agriculture.

It’s immediate effect would be to cut into pharma’s markets in a large number of areas, and if they wanted to fight they’d have to basically learn an entirely new industry and an entirely new market.

If you’re talking about really legal— not just ‘medical’— then they also would have to learn an entirely different distribution network. People aren’t going to be buying their pot at the drugstores (heh) they’ll be doing it at tobacconists, head shops, etc.

But even at the ‘medical use only’ level the basic problem remains; it’s agriculture, not pharma.

Yeah, the prison industry you have in the U.S. is truly frightening. I do like your ideas about tying “profitability” (or any other measurement of success) of prisons or people working there to essentially less people in prison (although you were talking about recidivism rates), btw.

Thanks. Hasn’t a prayer of ever being done, and if it were it’d need competent regulation, so it’s just my nice piece of pie up there in the sky.