The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the first synthetic liquid form of THC. Synthetic THC is called dronabinol, which is the generic name of the more familiar brand name Marinol. The Marinol pill was first approved way back in 1985, but is way less popular than real medical cannabis.
The liquid dronabinol will have the brand name Syndros, and will probably fall under Schedule III of the federal government’s Controlled Substances Act. Schedule III drugs indicate accepted medical use and have a low to moderate potential for abuse. Real cannabis still remains as a Schedule I controlled substance, which are said to have the least amount of accepted medical use and a high potential for addiction.
The pharmaceutical company Insys Therapeutics already manufactures Marinol and now they will get to legally produce Syndros. Marinol and Syndros have been approved to stimulate appetite and treat nausea suffered by patients with cancer and AIDS. According to their press release, Insys hopes to convert many of the 9,500 dronabinol prescriptions into Syndros.
Officials with the FDA seem to think that synthetic THC drugs like Syndros will offer a focused method of treating patients with medical cannabis as opposed to the real plant or its extracts. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to understand the holistic nature of cannabis medicine as many patients do.
There are currently 111 known cannabinoids in the cannabis plant. We know for sure that two of them, THC and CBD, have medical use. Anyone who has medicated with cannabis would concur that there’s a chance that some of those other cannabinoids have therapeutic properties as well. If only there were more proper tests being done on medical cannabis, we could start to find these things out.
Many medical patients, especially the parents of children suffering from diseases, don’t want to experience the psychoactive effects of THC – opting instead for CBD. Strains like Harlequin and Charlotte’s Web were developed for this very reason. Syndros could help ease the suffering of some patients that otherwise wouldn’t have access to such a treatment. At this point though, the FDA would probably best serve the taxpaying citizens who are in need of medical cannabis by allowing breeders to do what they do best, which is work with the plant medicine that nature gives us – not try to recreate its active ingredients in a laboratory.
What do you think? Is the FDA’s approval of liquid synthetic THC a good thing for patients and the cannabis industry as a whole, or will it have harmful effects in the long run?
Why recreate the wheel ? If marijuana gives the effect your looking for, then why try to reproduce that same effect with man made chemicals. Jeez could the almighty pharmaceutical lobbyists have anything to do with it ? My pain management Doctor will keep me on a daily regement of oxy , roxy , lyrica , muscle relaxers , and a failed series of spinal blockers before he’ll even let me mention medical marijuana . He told me point blank he will refuse to prescribe my pain meds if I test posative for THC .
Unfortunately it is all about the green(as in money) large pharmaceutical companies are afraid cuz they know they will lose money. So in come lobbyist to give Marijuana a bad rap and use scare tactics. I actually believed that until I was in my fifties and as a last ditch effort tried pot for pain. It works, better than anything I’ve ever tried. Now as a medical Marijuana pt. I can grow my own medicine and make rso and ointment for personal use.
You recreate the wheel if you can’t make any money from the first wheel. All about the color of green. My son had a bad accident and his pain management doctor told him the same thing. He has a medical cannabis card and decided against the synthetics in favor of a more natural medication. I have said for the longest time when the big boys figure out how to control the product…..here we are.
Anything other than natural, I E synthetic will have nightmarish after effects. Who were the idiots that allowed opiates on the market. These persons are responsible for 100,000 s of people die ing. When will someone hold these people accountable?
Is the FDA’s approval of liquid synthetic THC a good thing for patients and the cannabis industry as a whole, or will it have harmful effects in the long run? The FDA is only interested in Big Money and how they can profit at the expense of the patient. In the end, the FDA will screw up the very vital entourage effect of cannabis and the ensueing healing properties of cannabis to the point that people will be seriously harmed, if not killed.