People set in their ways earning millions of dollars (personal income, big pharma is probably a trillion dollar industry in total revenue) are hard to shift. At some level they have removed any trace of humanity from their personalities and have let the endless distractions that money can buy blind them from trying to improve things.
The biggest thing preventing this herb being utilised, is the lack of business innovation happening.
If I was the CEO of Johnson & Johnson or similar, I would be putting efforts in place to commercialise an industrialised process to extract the active chemicals and utilise already made trade agreements to disperse these products globally. It's what is happening with alkaloids, I have worked at the base level in this industry, it could for a long time coexist with a gradual switch to this new super drug as new methods of application are proved. There would be minimal money loss as they would be replacing a product with another of their own.
Smoking opiates is not the same as eating codeine, it's the same with cannabis, and it wouldn't be hard to deter the greater public from doing so. The potential use is known to be big, there's just a lot of time and money to be spent figuring out the best way to do it. It's likely that behind the scenes it's being done, but there is much to do, and decisions made are based solely on the profiteering and not at all on harm reduction.
The ethics of business is sadly lacking, wouldn't it be great if this plant brought light to this situation? The western world needs a better escape outlet than alcohol, nicotine and cheap goods. And sick people deserve proper help. Bring on the future.
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What you rather have, restless leg syndrome, or an "uncontrollable gambling problem"?