Devil's advocate suggests that a synthetic can be produced the same way every time where a cultured plant might have varying levels of the active compound in the plant. That makes it difficult to prescribe doses. As an example, suggesting a patient take 1 cap and 2 stems will be problematic for accurate dosing.
Conspirator's advocate says that bigPharma has synthesized and patented every active plant compound so that keeping the actual plants scheduled is to their benefit.
I'm fairly certain it's possible to extract psylocibin from the murshroom, giving the same advantages that the synthetic would have!
Edit0: for a more thorough look: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8247/18/3/380
that's generally much more expensive
Than RnD for a brand new synthetic drug?
as if that's a guaranteed win. The low hanging fruit was to recreate what is already in nature. Creating something brand new never seen before would be a greenfield project that I'm sure most of bigPharma is not a fan of.
I'm not certain I catch your drift - I'm saying the RnD work they did to synthesize COM360 or whatever it's called is probably more expensive than using known means to synthesize/extract psylocibin (as psylocybin was first synthesized in the 50's)
Sounds to me as if you're now suggesting researching a new way to make a synthetic drug where before I read it as researching a new drug nobody has found yet
I'm not sure what you mean either way!
Have a good one I don't think we are in disagreement