Cannabis is one of the oldest agricultural crops known to mankind. Some records reveal that the plant has been used by civilizations around the world for over ten thousand years. However, when it comes to medicinal purposes, cannabis has been used for around five thousand years and, according to some experts, it is considered the first pharmacopoeia in history.
Pharmacopoeia is the term used to define the ability to prepare medicines, in addition to determining and establishing quality parameters and analysis methods for pharmaceutical inputs. Thus, the Brazilian pharmacopoeia summarizes that medicines are all pharmaceutical products, technically obtained or prepared, with prophylactic, curative, palliative or diagnostic purposes.
The evolution of the pharmaceutical regulatory oman mobile database environment in Brazil
In Brazil, the pharmaceutical industry has developed more recently than elsewhere in the world. Therefore, to minimize the lag behind European countries, for example, the Brazilian government began to encourage the pharmaceutical sector by providing resources to help train scientists and build the first national laboratories.
It was from there that those responsible for developing public health plans, producing serums and vaccines, medicines and researching diagnostics were trained. During this period, important research laboratories emerged, such as the Bacteriological Institute (1892), the Vaccination Institute (1892), the Butantan Institute (1899), the Federal Serum Therapy Institute of Manguinhos (1900) and the Biological Institute (1927).
Although the industrial production of medicines had already been taking place at a national level since before the 1950s, it was around this period that the pharmaceutical sector in Brazil underwent significant changes, mainly after the development measures and plans foreseen by the government at the time, where foreign capital companies assumed the leadership of the competition over Brazilian laboratories.
There are records indicating that, in the 1960s, the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil had approximately 600 companies, consisting of distributors, importers and laboratories. However, the activities of these organizations were limited to the import of foreign technologies and labor, leaving only the simplest stages of the process, such as the final formulation and marketing, to Brazilian execution.
Another reason that hindered the development of the pharmaceutical sector in the country was the fact that, until the early 1990s, health regulations in Brazil had not shown significant progress. There was still no patent law for medicines, which forced companies to use formulas from abroad. This meant that researchers did not invest in the country, avoiding an unregulated and unsafe environment for their research, where anyone had the right to copy their creations.