Today's Evil Beet Gossip

I Bet You Wish You’d Thought of This First: The U.S. Government Has the Patent on Weed

I’m not kidding.

Despite the fact that the U.S. federal government refuses to admit to the medicinal uses of marijuana, they have owned the patent on medicinal uses of marijuana since 2003.

Applied for in 2001!

Here’s part of the abstract:

US Patent 6630507 – Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants

Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH3, and COCH3.

The assignee?

The United States of America as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Just for fun, here’s the 2006 FDA memo about how marijuana has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”

Hm. Hit the pipe and think on that one, kids.

Full patent is viewable here.

Oh, and just to be a huge asshole, I’d like to note that the term “new found” in the second sentence of their abstract is a grammatical error. The word should be “newfound” or “new-found.”

Shut up, government.

Thanks Mary!

12 CommentsLeave a comment

  • don`t know whether to laugh or cry……
    guess I better just whip out this here joint and muse on it !

  • Thank you for this great post! I do appreciate the link to the FDA memo. I particularly like how it says: “A past evaluation by several Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA), concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States, and no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use.” Hey — The Dept of Health and Human Services is the one that holds the patent!!! What hypocrisy!

    Look: the Hinchley/Rohrabacher Amendment which protects medical cannabis users from Federal prosecution is coming up soon for a vote in Congress. I for one am going to write to my representatives and tell them about this patent and demand that they support the bill.

  • man fuck the government!! just kidding
    what the hell is wrong with weed??
    even though its equal to smoking like 5 cigs
    and can cause many other things
    its still fucking awesome.

  • of course they do. When weed is legalized they want to have the monopoly and tax its ass.