≡ Menu

Patents and Pot: Feds’ patents say medical marijuana is good, drug war disagrees

The WSJ Blog, in On Intellectual Property and Pot, reveals the federal government’s schizophrenic approach to marijuana. On the one hand, in its zeal to prevent the nose-under-the-camel’s-tent of medical marijuana, it has to deny the medical benefits of marijuana  (okay, well, granted, the medical benefit claims of inhaling smoke bearing a psychoactive drug into one’s lungs may seem a bit … counterintuitive); on the other, “the U.S. government’s own patents and research claim otherwise. … One 2009 patent application, for instance, extols the pain-relieving and “healing properties” of marijuana. The government’s own 2003 patent discusses the usefulness of “cannabinoids” in treating “ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases” as well as “Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia. In July, the National Institutes of Health licensed the rights of the latter patent to the pharmaceutical company KannaLife….”

As a legal brief notes, “How can the government credibly deny the benefits of medical cannabis when the government itself is funding cutting-edge research proving the medical benefits of cannabis and seeking patents based on such research?”

Well, it’s not surprising that the state is schizo on something related to patents. It’s not the first time:

Share
{ 2 comments… add one }
  • casperweed January 16, 2013, 7:13 am

    We have the best quality marijuana you can ever imagine.
    we are reliable seller and we deliver to you before payment is done.
    All we want is a good and thrust full buyer for us to deal business with..

    contact….casperweed@gmail.com for more information

CC0
To the extent possible under law, Stephan Kinsella has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to C4SIF. This work is published from: United States. In the event the CC0 license is unenforceable a  Creative Commons License Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License is hereby granted.