Monday, June 06, 2005
Professor Craker replies:
Dear Mr. Webber: I appreciate your message of support and your insights into some of the problems in developing marijuana and marijuana extracts as a pharmaceutical. Following the money is always appropriate, as you have so clearly indicated. I am forwarding your letter to my colleagues for reading. Thanks again for your support.Lyle E. Craker
News and Opinions
News and Opinions
Carl S. Webber
670 West Valley Road
Wayne PA 19087
June 6, 2005
Professor Lyle E. Craker
UMass Amherst
Dear Professor Craker:
I am writing in response to an article on today's Fox News website which makes references to you and your work. I am a retired Management Consultant (MBA Wharton 1959) and a former non-scientific manager in the pharmaceutical industry.
The diagnostic question about why research on THC medical use is discouraged is: who stands to loose the most if THC and its congeners showed useful medical properties and were legally permitted in the US for medical use? Let us "follow the money".
Acceptable medical use would obviously greatly increase demand for permitting the recreational use of THC based products.
THC based products would compete with alcohol whose sales volume might diminish and profit margins erode.
Federal and State Governments, who derive a large income from taxes on products containing alcohol, and businesses engaged in the manufacture and sale of alcohol containing products, would also loose income. (The liquor lobby contributes to many politicians.)
Governmental concern must also be increased by the fact that informal THC production is cheap and easy compared to brewing beer or fermenting grapes, or distilling spirits.
There are also the non-economic and very reasonable concerns of any society about easily produced products with the combined properties of inducing pleasure and reducing judgment and physical coordination.
These observations will probably not be new to you, but I hope that you may find their expression of some use - if only to mitigate frustration at the usual inability of a large and complicated democracy to deal with the issues described.
Sincerely,
Carl S. Webber
I
Carl S. Webber
670 West Valley Road
Wayne PA 19087
June 6, 2005
Professor Lyle E. Craker
UMass Amherst
Dear Professor Craker:
I am writing in response to an article on today's Fox News website which makes references to you and your work. I am a retired Management Consultant (MBA Wharton 1959) and a former non-scientific manager in the pharmaceutical industry.
The diagnostic question about why research on THC medical use is discouraged is: who stands to loose the most if THC and its congeners showed useful medical properties and were legally permitted in the US for medical use? Let us "follow the money".
Acceptable medical use would obviously greatly increase demand for permitting the recreational use of THC based products.
THC based products would compete with alcohol whose sales volume might diminish and profit margins erode.
Federal and State Governments, who derive a large income from taxes on products containing alcohol, and businesses engaged in the manufacture and sale of alcohol containing products, would also loose income. (The liquor lobby contributes to many politicians.)
Governmental concern must also be increased by the fact that informal THC production is cheap and easy compared to brewing beer or fermenting grapes, or distilling spirits.
There are also the non-economic and very reasonable concerns of any society about easily produced products with the combined properties of inducing pleasure and reducing judgment and physical coordination.
These observations will probably not be new to you, but I hope that you may find their expression of some use - if only to mitigate frustration at the usual inability of a large and complicated democracy to deal with the issues described.
Sincerely,
Carl S. Webber
I
