 CNBC reports that UK-based GW Pharmaceuticals just launched its first prescription medicine derived from cannibis following recent regulatory approval. The drug, Sativex, is for multiple sclerosis patients to ease their cramping and spasms, and the company hopes to launch the product in the US as a treatment for cancer pain. It still has to go through the Phase III trails before application to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval. Undoubtedly, the company sank millions of dollars into this product to get it through the UK approval, and will spend many miilions more to get it through the nightmarish FDA approval process. One financial analyst states US sales for cancer pain alone could exceed $500 million.
Why not just smoke pot? Raining on their parade just a little, Joel Hay, professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of Southern California, predicts that "once medical marijuana is approved no company has any ability to sell their legitimate marijuana product". But Justin Grover, managing director at GW Pharmaceuticals, "thinks patients deserve the reassurance of a fully regulated and tested treatment". And he goes on to point out how Sativex "is a specifically formulated product designed to tackle very particular symptoms", and added that "crude cannabis will have a variety of effects that are often unpredictable". I guess he means those awful unpredictable effects like inducing calm, easing nausea, or combating the stresses of having cancer.
In the US, medical marijuana use and distribution varies by state, but still has federal law against it. In my own city of Santa Barbara, there is a current controversy over whether existing storefront marijuana dispensaries should be allowed, and if so, how many? This gets into the whole drug legalization, nanny state debate, as it should. Beyond the simple notion that we should be able to put whatever we want into our bodies, even if it may or may not be good for us, the War on Drugs in general, and the issue of medical marijuana use in particular, needs to be understood from an economic standpoint.
When a commodity that has a certain demand is restricted in its supply by outlawing it, several things will necessarily happen. It will become more expensive, as competition shrinks and all the factors of production, transportation and distribution get more expensive. It will attract and nurture nefarious players, who are willing to accept very high risks for potentially very high rewards. Its quality will go down or become unpredictable or even dangerous, as consumers' product information will be diminished. It will be associated with violence, as this will be the dispute resolution mechanism when there are no courts available. All of these things are obvious in even a brief reflection of Prohibition in this country, and yet people can't seem to see the same economic forces at work in our failed War on Drugs or the uncontrolled violence on our borders. These are just predictable, unintended consequences of our nanny state policies. When prohibition was rescinded in 1933, alcohol use did not go up, or at most 20% by some estimates. When Portugal decriminalized drugs (and not just marijuana) in 1991, drug use actually went down a bit.
Let's say Sativex turns out to be a great drug. Do you think it will be cheap? I would bet not, at least until it goes off patent years down the road. There will likely be people that cannot afford it, or it won't be covered on their plan, or they'll have to lobby their representatives or the Obamacare bureaucrats to provide it to them. At someone else's expense, of course. Meanwhile smoking marijuana, a cheap and effective method to treat many ailments will likely continue to suffer under a schizophrenic quasi-legal status only begrudgingly supported in its medical context by non-potheads. And you can bet that Mr. Gover and GW Pharmaceutical chairman Dr. Geoffrey Guy will play to the wishes of the "Baptists" in this classic "Baptist and Bootlegger" scenario, spouting how marijuana must be illegal or severely restricted, for the protection of the people, while their "fully tested and regulated product" gets government protection. The "Bootleggers", meanwhile, fearlessly ply their lucrative underground trade, only fearing that the people might someday wake up and decriminalize what they're doing. |
