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MARIJUANA : THE DIFFICULT JOURNEY

© Shelley Wake

Marijuana has a tough road to travel on its journey to regulation and widespread medical use. It has a much more difficult journey to travel than many other drugs out there.

Marijuana has some special properties that make it more difficult to work with than most drugs. The majority of these problems occur because marijuana is a plant, not a chemical.

The first problem is mainly a matter of economics. While a drug can be patented, a plant cannot. Pharmaceutical manufacturers put a huge amount of money into researching new drugs and getting them approved for use. They get a return on this investment by having the drug patented. This means, for a period of about three years, maybe seven or maybe more, they are the only ones allowed to produce and sell the drug. Without these patents, there is no return on a company's investment. And so companies are not lining up to put major funds into researching marijuana. Economically, it just isn't a smart business decision.

Having said that, there is one way that company's could get their money back. This is to find the actual working chemicals in marijuana and manufacture and patent these. And this brings us to the next unique property of marijuana. Marijuana contains over 400 chemicals. Of these, about 60 are known as cannabinoids, which are thought to be responsible for the painkilling effects. And there is one in particular that is thought to be the most beneficial. This chemical is known as tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Research is currently occurring on these chemicals. If scientists can isolate these chemicals, and understand their exact structure, then they can recreate them in the laboratory. And this then could be a chemical that they could patent.

On this subject, comes the next problem. THC may be the chemical that causes the medical benefits, but it is also the one that causes the high. Scientists have to eliminate the side-effects to make it a viable drug. And again, research is happening on this in laboratories world wide. THC is a very complicated chemical. It could be that one part of it produces the high and another produces the benefits. Scientists may be able to alter the chemical structure to remove the high but keep the benefits. This is what experimental chemistry is trying to achieve. Using the naturally occurring THC as a clue scientists can develop a new drug that provides all the benefits without the side effects.