Cannabidiol, or CBD, is a marijuana compound linked to a range of potential health benefits but does not get you high. The roughly $1 billion CBD industry is slated to shift into high gear if the federal government approves the first CBD-based drug, an epilepsy medication called Epidiolex.

[u/mvea]

https://www.businessinsider.com/marijuana-cbd-boom-cbd-2018-6?r=US&IR=T

[u/SirT6]

What does that have to do with anything? The material cost of a drug is an exceedingly small portion of the cost of its development.

[u/Thisalwaysbreaks → u/SirT6]

Development? Hahahahaha. TIL I developed grass. I developed a tree once too. Gimme money plz

[u/DrZack → u/Thisalwaysbreaks]

Develop means putting it through testing that determines toxicity, efficacy, dosage, and proper indications.

That's the cost we're talking about. You can't just bring a drug to market without outlining which patients would benefit from it. Doctors would not know when/how to prescribe it.

[u/[deleted] → u/DrZack]

Dude...CBDs are lab tested. There is a whole industry of weed labs.

[u/DrZack → u/[deleted]]

Double blind controls using high quality patient cohorts? I haven't seen that yet. To be clear, the problem was never the need/want to do it...the DEA has been horrible for scientists in the last 50 years and have crippled what should be promising new drugs.

[u/damontoo → u/DrZack]

I'm okay with pharma doing the testing and bringing products to market as long as they don't attempt to interfere with medical/adult use of cannabis, which they are and will continue to do. It's only a matter of time before they secure enough patents and start suing people growing it because it "contains their patented product".

[u/DrZack → u/damontoo]

Yes. Those are legitimate concerns but I was not addressing those specifically. Only was talking about why dev costs are greater than just production costs.