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Last spring Canada became the first and only country to approve a drug called Sativex to treat the chronic pain endured by most of the 2.5 million people with multiple sclerosis. The announcement caused, ahem, quite a buzz. Sativex is a whole-plant extract of high-grade Cannabis sativa, a.k.a. marijuana, and is the first prescription drug to contain all 60-plus of the plant's cannabinoids, those compounds that include the psychoactive chemical THC. Although the drug packs a pain-numbing punch, its mouth-spray formulation slows its release into the body, thus diminishing those consciousness-altering side effects associated with smoking marijuana.
Despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June to uphold the ban on medical marijuana, drug companies are not discouraged. In fact, Sativex is just one of nearly two dozen new pharmaceutical compounds inspired by the herb. Last year the Society for Neuroscience conference featured almost 200 papers on cannabinoids; a decade ago there were exactly zero. And 22 pharmaceutical companies, including giants Pfizer and GlaxoSmith-Kline, helped fund last year's meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society.
In 1992 not a single drug company attended, according to executive director Richard Musty. "Now," he says, "they're showing up and madly taking notes."
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Man has been using marijuana & its derivative form hashish for millennia. Now big pharma smells $$$ instead of just pot smoke.
Despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June to uphold the ban on medical marijuana, drug companies are not discouraged. In fact, Sativex is just one of nearly two dozen new pharmaceutical compounds inspired by the herb. Last year the Society for Neuroscience conference featured almost 200 papers on cannabinoids; a decade ago there were exactly zero. And 22 pharmaceutical companies, including giants Pfizer and GlaxoSmith-Kline, helped fund last year's meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society.
In 1992 not a single drug company attended, according to executive director Richard Musty. "Now," he says, "they're showing up and madly taking notes."
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Man has been using marijuana & its derivative form hashish for millennia. Now big pharma smells $$$ instead of just pot smoke.