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Tara Green
Natural News
As DEA raids and IRS harassment continue on state-approved medical marijuana, Big Pharma eyes the profitability of cannabis and prepares to muscle in, using its lobbyists and government connections to ensure a monopoly on legal sales of the drug.
In early April of 2011, two drug manufacturing giants, G.W. Pharmaceuticals and Novartis, announced they had formed an alliance to license and market GW’s Sativex, a liquid cannabis drug. The drug is already available in Great Britain, as well as Canada and Spain. The licensing agreement with Novartis will enable sales to expand into markets in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. FDA Phase III trials are still being organized for Otsuka, GW’s partner for licensing Sativex for the US market.
Unlike other cannaboids produced for recreational or medicinal use, Sativex is not a synthetic but an actual extract of the cannabis plant. It therefore lacks the side-effects of the synthetic drugs which merely attempt to replicate cannabis. Patients, primarily people diagnosed with MS or cancer, spray Sativex beneath their tongues.
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