"Decades ago, selective breeding by growers in US dramatically lowered the CBD content of cannabis; their customers preferred varietals that were more mind-altering due to a higher THC, lower CBD content. To meet the demands of medical cannabis patients, growers are currently developing more CBD-rich strains."
This is a major reason to prefer pharmaceuticals over the original raw herb, who's concentrations and additional and potentially unwanted active ingredients varies from plant to plant.
It's more important if you need to be prescribed something. I need to eat fruit and vegetables to live, and the value of their being exactly formulated is negligible.
Marijuana is hard to OD on and doesn't cause long term liver damage when used at reasonable levels for extended periods (which opiates do). Prescriptions aren't necessary.
Please reread what I posted, and perhaps follow the links.
E.g., if you want the medicinal properties of CBD, how can you know you're actually getting a significant dose?
It's like the old use of curare in surgical anesthesia (prior to inserting a tube down the airway), the anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist (my mother was one of the latter, along with Bill Clinton's mother) didn't grind up some plant material with a mortar and pestle and hope she was administering just the right amount. No, they used properly titrated extract prepared by those eeeeevil drug companies.
Or what if you're concerned about THC exposure? As I understand it, it's at least associated, perhaps correlated, with some very unpleasant things, like an increased incidence of schizophrenia.
All drugs, whatever the source, are dangerous, and will harm and kill small fractions of the people who might take them.
Comparing the mass quantities of stuff you get from normal eating to the low doses of these drugs, whatever the source, is not, I think relevant. You can reasonably expect different concentrations of essential foodstuffs to balance out, and for vitamins and some minerals take a generic one a day pill to make sure you don't inadvertently get any deficiency diseases.
Right now any clinical data we have on marijuana's active ingredients is massively tainted by the fact that NIH will only fund research into harmful effects, so essentially you're suggesting that we're better off getting "prescribed" a quantity of something based on faulty/biased research.
(Incidentally, CBD products are now technically legal in the US -- you can order them on Amazon!)
The point with curare is that a small amount will kill you. All drugs are to some extent dangerous, but some are safe enough that people are allowed to buy them on their own and figure out the dosage they need -- e.g. aspirin, most antihistamines. The same arguments would apply to them.
Really, please, follow the links and read. Some of these drugs were or are being developed in other countries, so it's obviously not axiomatic the NIH's research had anything to do with their development.
And at least 3 of them are being done in conjunction with the FDA, 2 approved, the CBD drug in Phase 2/3 FDA level trials. This massive tainting somehow hasn't convinced the FDA that THC and CBD are bad.
Errr, I hope it's obvious that drug trials produce clinical data....
As for your final point, I would hope bmelton's comment would underline the folly of trying to use raw herbs of uncertain potency for reliably getting what is needed. Does Charlotte Figi need serious, hard to obtain quantities of CBD to stop her seizures, or will any old weed suffice???
I'm aware of the clinical trials of marijuana derived drugs, but that produces clinical data on those drugs. (Indeed there's been a synthetic THC drug for AIDS patients available for years, but it appears not to work very well, and not as well for many patients as "the real thing".)
My point is pretty simple -- marijuana is pretty damn safe, safer than tylenol for example, and it may or may not help with various medical conditions, so let people use it. If drug companies want to formulate highly specialized or refined derivative and market them against stuff you can grow yourself or buy from a dispensary, let them. But don't criminalize the basic product.
Let me recommend to you the documentary "WEED" to watch.
The difference between pot and pot specifically grown to have high CBD content is like the difference between corn and corn syrup. Most marijuana, even medical marijuana, is not going to contain enough CBD content to be effective at treating certain ailments.
In the case of kids with Dravet Syndrome, the difference is drastic. Smoking medical marijuana all day long is not helpful at all, but smoking marijuana bred for CBD potency is downright curative, at least at preventing seizures.
Charlotte Figi has dozens of grand mal seizures a day if left to her own devices. The average medical marijuana does not help her, but CBD-potent marijuana effectively quells her seizures. A little bit of oil extracted from CBD halted the grand mal seizures.
The downside is that practically nobody is growing this type of marijuana, and specifically, we're breeding most medical marijuana to have higher THC content at the expense of CBDs.
In this case, yes, pharmaceutical-grade products are possibly superior, especially as they can begin regulating it and testing its actual effectiveness towards treating chronic issues like Dravet that "smoking pot" doesn't necessarily impact at all.
That's an early trial, probably more to prove safety than efficacy. The Phase 2/3 trial they said they're doing now will at least start to nail down both---or not, or to what degree and for whom, as clinical trials do.
Side note: I've not studied it (know only one person, who's stable with existing drugs), but just from what I'm reading about CBD and Dravet Syndrome it's clear, and not surprising that epilepsy is a symptom with multiple causes. In this subset: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_epilepsy_with_febr... researchers researchers have found no less than 4 genes who's mutations can result in different diseases.
Caffeine is probably a good example of how weed should be handled. Caffeine is actually way more dangerous (OD'ing on it is something that is actually reasonably possible). If you want precision doses of caffeine, you can certainly buy it in pill form produced by reliable laboratories. On the other hand, buying it in 'natural' products such as coffee beans is perfectly legal. Don't want to mess around with the inconsistent results from raw product but don't want it in pill form either? The Coca Cola Company has got you covered there.
"Decades ago, selective breeding by growers in US dramatically lowered the CBD content of cannabis; their customers preferred varietals that were more mind-altering due to a higher THC, lower CBD content. To meet the demands of medical cannabis patients, growers are currently developing more CBD-rich strains."
This is a major reason to prefer pharmaceuticals over the original raw herb, who's concentrations and additional and potentially unwanted active ingredients varies from plant to plant.