Medical marijuana: profits soar while regulations lag

WASHINGTON — Medical marijuana corporations promote medication, identical to pharmaceutical corporations. However they’re not taking part in by the identical guidelines — and that’s placing sufferers in danger.

A number of of the biggest medical marijuana corporations, like Trulieve, Curaleaf, and Verano, are promoting their merchandise as remedies not only for muscle aches, however for main medical circumstances like most cancers and melancholy, with out proof to again up these claims. Some are dispatching groups of gross sales reps and affected person advocates to speak up the well being advantages of their merchandise to docs, and in some circumstances, even providing physicians personalised swag or Topgolf events.

Taking a web page out of pharma’s playbook is working. Medical marijuana is now not an experiment reserved only for extra liberal states like California and Washington — it’s huge companies in historically conservative “Simply Say No” states, too. In Florida alone, Trulieve, Curaleaf, and Verano collectively offered over 184,000 kilos value of the drug final yr — sufficient to provide all 22 million Florida residents seven pre-rolled marijuana joints apiece. In consequence, a number of main medical marijuana corporations have amassed billion- or multibillion-dollar valuations.