http://bigbudsmag.com/grow/article/medical-marijuana-next-gmo-franken-plant
"Is Medical Marijuana the Next GMO "Franken-Plant"?"
Posted by
Lee G. Leissett | April 01 2013 The ever-increasing number of GMO foods entering our food supply is creating great concern for many people. Now it looks like marijuana might be the next major GMO crop.
Even more frightening is that despite public opinion strongly in favor of GMO-labeling, companies like Monsanto have been able to crush any labeling laws by spending millions of dollars. So you might not even know if your cannabis is GMO-free.
There are many reasons why Monsanto and other GMO companies would want to get their claws into cannabis. For the hemp proponent or medical marijuana user there is little doubt that cannabis is a great (if not the greatest) resource on the planet. After all, this is what the whole marijuana prohibition thing is about.
Hemp
Cannabis is much more than medicine and Monsanto knows it.
Industrial hemp, which is made from a non-psychoactive variety of cannabis, has about 45 accepted varieties registered or already in commercial trade, used in almost every aspect of manufacturing, from clothing to building materials. What is interesting about these varieties is that none are suitable for growth below the
45th parallel. They were all developed and used above the 45th parallel.
Unbeknownst to hemp activists in California, and other states that have passed hemp farming bills, there is no hemp variety currently available that will produce less that .3 percent THC when grown below the 45th parallel. This is because the amount of UV light that gets to the earth’s surface is higher below that parallel and cannabis has a built in UV protector, THC.
As soon as Monsanto, or another morally questionable GMO company, creates a GMO cannabis plant that will produce less than .3% THC (regardless of the UV light to which it is exposed) they will monopolize the industrial hemp industry in the United States (and most of the world).
Medical Marijuana
There are also big incentives for GMO companies to manipulate medical marijuana. The medical marijuana industry has been a thorn in the side of Big Pharma for over a decade now and they will do whatever is necessary to reclaim those profits.
Once teamed-up with GMO companies, Big Pharma can create Franken-strains with the ability to produce more medically active compounds which will be extracted, patented, and sold as medicine.
This is similar to the situation with plant-based medications like morphine and codeine, both extracted from the non-GMO opium poppy (
papaver somniferum) and whose active compounds are chemically reconstructed to create the even more potent oxycodone (found in Percocet and Oxycontin), while growing and consuming the plant oneself is illegal.
AFP News
broke the story in 2011 regarding GMO medical marijuana:
Greenhouses lined with genetically modified marijuana sit on a mountainside just an hour ride from Cali, Colombia, where farmers say the enhanced plants are more powerful and profitable.
One greenhouse owner said she can sell the modified marijuana for 100,000 pesos ($54) per kilo (2.2 pounds), which is nearly 10 times more than the price she can get for ordinary marijuana.
Local authorities said the arrival of genetically modified seeds, which are imported from Europe and the United States have allowed "a bigger production and better quality at the same time".
A police commander in the Cauca region where Cali is located, Carlos Rodriguez, said one of the modified varieties goes by the name "Creepy".
Another seed modified in The Netherlands is fetching a good price in the area, said a foreign researcher, who asked to remain anonymous. That version, well-known in Europe as "La Cominera", is named for the Colombian village where it grows.
"La Cominera's" higher value is due to its increased concentration of THC, the plant's principal active ingredient, and the modified plant verges on an 18 percent concentration level, compared to a normal marijuana plant's two to seven percent, said the researcher.
Once the gene responsible for marijuana’s psycho-activity was identified, mad scientists had the ability to start manipulating it. The genome of the cannabis plant was
sequenced and published by the British company Medicinal Genomics in 2011.
Whether their goal is to increase or decrease THC production within the cannabis plant, there is no doubt medical marijuana is the next big Franken-plant for the GMO industry.
[video=youtube;D4VVyX7Dl40]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4VVyX7Dl40&feature=player_embedded[/video]
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