Me thinks the Pharmaceutical companies are salivating......once the legal framework is firmly in place, production, strain development, growing techniques, etc. etc. will be in their hands........and prices will drop.........competition will increase...........hopefully.......thus giving an incentive to cost cutting......
as a grower/breeder that is something I dont want to see. Next Pfizer will patent OG kush and anyone who sells a cross wirh it will owe them money. Something most cannabis breeders should be worried about
The mainstream Big Pharma (mostly marketing) companies will only get interested in making and selling conventional plant-derived cannabinoid products if/when there is a conventional pharmaceutical market for them, such as when plant-derived products are fully legalized with prescribed FDA-approved products routinely paid for by medical insurance (like every other product these companies sell), when legalization has closed down the competition: the licensed dispensary and illegal markets (varying state-by-state). As shown by the article above, growing to get cannabinoids is inefficient with costs/unit way too high by pharma standards. Otherwise growing is tainted by bad rep/illegality, and even when fully legalized these companies would have to compete with lots of small companies/growers, criminals (e.g., where states elect to keep illegal) and individuals, something they would simply just avoid.
Big Pharma companies are and will be much more interested in all the known and new synthetic cannabinoid analogs and derivatives they can develop as patented prescription drugs, and alternative (non-plant-dependent, patentable) methods of cannabinoid production, such as large cell culture, genetic and metabolic engineering of cannabinoid production, highly efficient methods of synthesis and purification, methods of administration (e.g., instant acting edibles), etc.. Growing is a too costly, uncontrollable (too many players) and non-standardizable method of manufacture by their standards; and (as breeders know) plants are largely not patentable, so there's no Big money in cannabis breeding, seed business, etc. Big Pharma would have a hard time competing with the illegal market, particularly on prices - They much prefer monopolies among themselves.
If you want an established industry to worry about, consider the tobacco products companies. Unlike pharma, they already grow, process and sell plant-derived, highly regulated, controversial, non-prescription, recreational drug(-like) products. And the alcoholic (from plants) beverage companies are similarly well positioned to make and market legal plant-derived cannabis products.
