Depends how you look at it

[Rokcet Scientist]

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"Unlike smoked marijuana--which contains more than 400 different chemicals, including most of the hazardous chemicals found in tobacco smoke-Marinol has been studied and approved by the medical community and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation's watchdog over unsafe and harmful food and drug products. Since the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, any drug that is marketed in the United States must undergo rigorous scientific testing. The approval process mandated by this act ensures that claims of safety and therapeutic value are supported by clinical evidence and keeps unsafe, ineffective and dangerous drugs off the market.

Morphine, for example, has proven to be a medically valuable drug, but the FDA does not endorse the smoking of opium or heroin. Instead, scientists have extracted active ingredients from opium, which are sold as pharmaceutical products like morphine, codeine, hydrocodone or oxycodone. In a similar vein, the FDA has not approved smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes, but has approved the active ingredient-THC-in the form of scientifically regulated Marinol."

Dirty bastards.

United States Drug Enforcement Agency

[Autumnlicious]

Drug policymakers had hoped Marinol would be "a godsend," according to Mark Kleiman, director of the Drug Policy Analysis Program at UCLA's School of Public Affairs. "[Marinol] wasn't any fun and made the user feel bad," Kleiman says, "so it could be approved without any fear that it would penetrate the recreational market, and then used as a club with which to beat back the advocates of whole cannabis as a medicine." Kleiman thinks that Sativex might succeed where Marinol failed, not only because evidence from GW's clinical trials might convince regulators that it works, but also because GW is poised to "persuade the drug warriors that getting Sativex approved fast is the best way to block the medical marijuana movement."

REF: http://motherjones.com/print/16303

Of course, we all know the UCLA School of Public Affairs is a totally biased source.