The Economics of CannabisTM
The groundbreaking hypothesis we published last summer is repeated here:
If chronic inflammation represents “the unifying cause of disease” and cannabis and hemp have anti-inflammatory properties and the endogenous cannabinoid system is a widespread neuromodulatory system that, among other things, modulates inflammation, then when a diet and lifestyle are adopted that do not contribute to chronic inflammation combined with appropriate and effective cannabis/hemp treatment by means of a clinical trial with subjects that all have chronic inflammation, the expected result should be a superior reduction in chronic inflammation then diet and lifestyle changes alone.
The full hypothesis can be found in our September issue of the Canadian edition. As an extension of that hypothesis I predicted while guest speaking at a College program in October 2018 that genomics (personalized medicine, pharmagenomics) could prove instrumental in this industry and particularly so on the medical side. It was not long after these events that we began to see news releases of companies exploring pharmagenomics through partnerships and joint ventures. The hypothesis I am making this month in many ways is a natural evolution out of those because, as discussed earlier, I predict a migration towards identification of plants based more on genetic markers and properties rather than common strain names and such a migration would go hand in hand with genomics. There are, by example, over 15,000 varieties of Tomato yet we typically write “tomatoes” on the shopping list and then make a more precise decision once at the market. The hypothesis can therefore be stated as:
If cannabis and hemp are treated as crops and with a full plant view then prepared stakeholders should excel and the ill prepared along with those refusing to adapt may fail.