Marijuana alternative painkillers .. unfair competition to relieve pain

Zahra Magdy

Many people exert strong pressure to regulate marijuana in the remaining states of the United States, whether for medical use or public circulation, with claims that this herb can help treat a whole range of physical and psychological disorders, promoted by researchers and doctors as safe and natural, . But is this a real threat to major pharmaceutical companies? That seems to be happening.

Drug companies are one of the biggest influencers in the US economy. In just three years, pharmaceutical companies lost $ 18.5 billion, according to the Daily Health Post, and are expected to increase by increasing the number of marijuana legislators with a national market of $ 6.7 billion a year. ArcView Group Reaching 20 billion by 2020.

In Colorado alone, sales of marijuana reached $ 996 million in 2015, and the government received 135 million tax revenues earmarked for improving roads, entertainment centers and scholarships for low-income students, the Guardian newspaper reported.

Research from the marijuana regulatory alliance showed that its addicts were substituting them with high pharmaceuticals and very high alcohol intake, and the use of painkillers had dropped by about 25 percent in the states that started marijuana compared to what was before. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014, They may use marijuana to treat their pain instead of painkillers.

According to research published by the University of Georgia, doctors' prescriptions for drugs used to treat chronic pain and anxiety decreased in states that started marijuana. Only $ 165 million was provided in 2013, and the study estimated that $ 470 million per year was spent on Medicare If marijuana is standardized at all states.

Experience has shown that legalization of marijuana is a battle for pharmaceutical companies only. Alcohol companies have been threatened by the fact that doctors advised their consumers to replace them with marijuana when they were legalized. But when the Marijuana laws were enacted in 2014, sales of alcohol increased according to government tax data. In states such as Massachusetts and Nevada, liquor companies were more likely to support Marijuana's decision to legalize marijuana at $ 88,000 because approval of the legislation would allow liquor distributors the only right to distribute marijuana for the first 18 months.

Competition for pain
Drug and alcohol companies have long funded the opposition to legalize marijuana, raising timely questions about the threats to their market share if that happens, until Insys Therapeutics' pharmaceutical contributions alone amounted to $ 500,000 and came as the biggest antithesis of legislation. According to a Washington Post analysis of campaign funding records, donations accounted for 10% of all funds raised by the opposition campaign.

The opposition claimed that the legalization of marijuana would transform the United States into a miserable state with an ominous musical background and teachers drawing a bleak future for children if their parents agreed, and justified their position by saying that legalizing marijuana would be a public health hazard. And children alike.

Toxicity
Although fear for the future of Mariguana children was legitimate, the worst is that Insys Therapeutics manufactures a powerful pain reliever derived from fentanyl, an artificial opioid that is 100 times more powerful than morphine and has the ability to kill only a microgram , And it is 50 times stronger than heroin.

However, most of the victims were children. Their visits to emergency rooms increased with marijuana after the new market was abandoned by 225% between 2004 and 2011. Fentanyl caused 47,000 deaths in 2014, according to the Ministry of Health and Human Services.

After this step, it became difficult to believe that public safety was the only reason why the company was reluctant to ratify marijuana. The Insys Therapeutics crisis in 2017 was approved by the Drug Enforcement Administration for its new drug Syndros, Marijuana herb, is prescribed to treat nausea, vomiting, cancer patients and AIDS.

Rather than medicine
Supporters of marijuana against pharmaceutical companies rely on Francis L.'s statement. Yang said in a two-year hearing that almost all drugs had potential toxic effects other than marijuana, especially since all studies on marijuana showed no adverse effects other than dry mouth, and that marijuana in its natural form was one of The most active therapeutic substances, and also the researchers wrote in the journal "Health Economics" that marijuana less addictive than opiates with sedatives.

The National Academy of Sciences has observed the use of marijuana instead of expensive medical drugs for the treatment of glaucoma, eye pain, chronic pain, neurodegenerative disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, sleep disorders, nausea, chemotherapy-related vomiting, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis.

Researchers also claim the ability of marijuana to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in children, which has always been described as the drug Ritalin as a treatment, the negative effects of diarrhea, headache and psychosis, even with prolonged use causes death, while marijuana proved the ability to treat a different mechanism About Ritalin.