How Does Big Pharma Feel About Losing Over 18 Billion Dollars to Cannabis?
By Steve Bridge – 02.06 2019
https://cbdtesters.co/2019/05/23/big-pharma-medical-cannabis/
When it comes to the pharmaceutical
industry, unfortunately, these days it’s more
about money than saving lives.
But how does big pharma feel about
potentially losing more than $18 billion to
medical cannabis?
Cannabis
helps
many people with
a variety of
physical
and
mental
health
conditions.
It’s also been used
medicinally for centuries
and has proven itself, for the most part, to be
non-toxic, non-addictive and safe.
Cannabis helps with anything from
sleeplessness, to pain management, even
more severe conditions like epilepsy or
Parkinson’s. But it isn’t so easy to make
money from something that grows abundantly
in nature, and that doesn’t need to be
processed or marketed.
As research into the medicinal value of
cannabis deepens, big pharma has taken note
as its aware that all this cannabis legalisation
talk would dent their bottom line severely.
A new report carried out by investigation firm
New Frontier Data came up with some
interesting findings.
They looked at how the introduction of
cannabis could affect big pharma financially,
as Giadha Aguirre De Carcer, CEO of New
Frontier Data said, according to an article in
Civilized: “If cannabis somehow managed to
be adopted nationally, we would start to see a
pattern of patients turning to medicinal
marijuana as a substitute or a sequel to
pharmaceuticals,” he said.
Medical cannabis is poised to take a lot of
business from the pharmaceutical industry
New Frontier looked at nine medical
conditions that are treated effectively by
cannabis.
They found that Epilepsy, Glaucoma,
Tourette Syndrome, Chemotherapy Induced
Vomiting and Nausea (CIVN), Nerve Pain,
Anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD), and Chronic Pain can be treated with
cannabis, instead of expensive, addictive
pharmaceutical drugs that often cause side
effects.
Furthermore, a Health Affairs study found
that in states where cannabis had become
legal medically, there was an 11 percent
decrease for prescriptions for pharmaceutical
medications to treat those conditions.
The New Frontier report took those figures
and projected them into the future, looking at
the financial impact legalising medical
cannabis will have on the pharmaceutical
industry. That’s how they came up with the
$18 billion figure – a number that would
undoubtedly have Big pharma more than a
little concerned.
De Carcer explained: “The United States
constitutes 35 percent of the global
pharmaceutical market, the largest market in
the world, and a major driver of the U.S.
economy.
It is one of many industries that will be
impacted by the growth of the legal cannabis
market, and we are already starting to see that
trend in legal, medical states where the use of
key prescription drugs is down by 11
percent,” he said.
This all points to the fact that cannabis is bad
news for big pharma, even if it’s safer and
often more effective than some medications.
For the time being, it’s an ongoing battle
between the cannabis legalisation movement
and big pharma who influence governments
through lobbying.
Only time will tell who will win, or whether
the pharmaceutical industry will come up
with a way to patent cannabis and end the
fight there.