Pubdate: Wed, 09 Nov 2011
Source: Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Copyright: 2011 C.E.G.W./Times-Shamrock
Contact:  http://www.metrotimes.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1381
Author: Bruce Saunders

BOTTOM LINE

All of the praise of marijuana's powers to alleviate such a wide 
variety of ills merely serves as evidence of why the power of the 
corporate - read pharmaceutical - medical establishment uses its 
lobbying influence to insure that it will not compete with their products.

Look to the bottom line. In Australia and some European countries, 
strains of periwinkle are prescribed as effective cancer-fighters; in 
this country, however, scores of components of periwinkle have been 
extracted from their plant source and registered and marketed as 
cancer-fighting drugs. Not that this approach saves more lives, but 
it does effectively give monopolies (through patent) to 
pharmeceutical companies - for much higher prices than you'll see in 
your local health shop! (Look: The bottom line!)

It's rather like not selling a plate of food to someone who's 
starving when you've got the only-game-in-town, and can sell them - 
by the spoonful - enough to keep body and soul together ... till the 
next payment.

For some, the top 1 percent, it doesn't get any better!

- -Bruce Saunders, Detroit
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom