The Marijuana Debate
Would legalizing marijuana make it easy to regulate and control?
Undoubtingly, regulation of marijuana would actually cut down on the many problems that we have right now with the drug itself. We have an illegal market with marijuana which is what causes the violence, the crime, the drug dealing, the major cartels getting involved because there's money involved in it. There would not be money involved if the government were to actually regulate it. If the government regulated it, they would be taking it out of hands of drug dealers. It would be a drug dealer unemployment act and it would also allow the government to actually focus on the major crimes, the murder investigations, the violent crimes and focus also on the major traffickers - those major cartels who even after regulation is implemented are still trying to evade the law. You would see hash penalties for these kinds of things - for trafficking, for selling to minors. The system would be so radically different than what we have now that most people wouldn't recognize it. And it would be only a change for the better because we'd be keeping marijuana out of the hands of kids because to take the example of tobacco you never see drug dealers carding to see if somebody is of age or not, you would never see that kind of thing. But the weak hard campaign, in convenience stores has been successful at preventing youth who are under eighteen from procuring cigarettes. But darn sure, you would never see a drug dealer carding to see how old somebody is and make sure they're of the requisite age. We want to make sure that marijuana stays out of the hands of kids, stays out of the hands of people who shouldn't have it and it should be regulated so that we're cutting in to the business of these drug dealers. We need to put these drug dealers out of business, but the solution that the government advances to doing that are all flawed because they never examine the possibility of actually regulating it.
Will Sativex be available in the US?
Sativex, a pharmaceutical product that is derived from natural THC and natural cabbinoids from the marijuana plant are very likely to soon be available in the United States. In fact FDA trials have been recently announced and there are ongoing trials in other countries currently with Sativex. It's an under the tongue spray that patient's use, it's called a sublingual spray and it is ingested, of course, through the mouth and seeps into the bloodstream that way. The method of ingestion is not ideal according to patients who we've talked to anecdotal evidence. Partly because it is difficult to titrate the medicine, which means to adjust the dosage of it. And it's also a slow onset of the medication, whereas if a vapour or a smoke is actually inhaled into the lungs it's a much more rapid onset. So the titration and the time of onset tend to be a little different with Sativex then it does with, say, medical marijuana that patients will use through a vaporizer for example.
