Why Is “Big Pharma” So Scared of Legal Marijuana?

A new study, recently released by the journal Health Affairs, shows clearly why the big pharmaceutical companies are so worried about marijuana legalization: they can’t handle the competition.

A father-daughter research team at the University of Georgia looked at a mountain of data from Medicare Part D payments from 2010 to 2013 in states that had legalized medical marijuana and compared those numbers to state that had no legal medical marijuana.

What they found was that in states that have legalized marijuana for medical purposes, certain prescriptions were written much less than they were in states that do not have medical cannabis, as shown in this handy chart from The Washington Post:

Just to make sure this was directly the result of medical marijuana laws, researchers Ashley and W. David Bradford also checked the numbers for categories that medical marijuana is not typically recommended for — like blood thinners and antibiotics — and those numbers were pretty constant for all states.

The ailment medical marijuana is recommended for the most is chronic pain. Anxiety and nausea are also high on that list, as are insomnia and depression.

“This provides strong evidence that the observed shifts in prescribing patterns were in fact due to the passage of the medical marijuana laws,” the researchers wrote.

If I ran a big pharmaceutical company, I would be very worried about people choosing marijuana over my products. I would also be looking into ways to get into the legal marijuana industry. The ability to adapt is a must for all companies operating on the free market. It’s why Microsoft makes video game systems and Google makes smart phone operating systems.

Consumer preferences change. The companies that can change with them are the ones that survive long-term.