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Commonly available herbs like tobacco? Nope, no way any business could make money through a commonly available herb

Have you seen the billions made by cranks and quacks?

Just multi-vitamins is a billion dollar industry and apart from pregnancy or perhaps vitamin D most of the claims are bogus.

Because they would sell you pineapple extract for ten times the price, and you'd buy it because it'd be covered by insurance.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/15/fish-now-by-prescriptio...

And they would isolate the effective compounds making a more effective hybrid, claim IP and make a ton of money.

There's enough money in alternative medicine that they could fund and publish their own studies to prove it's effective. They haven't.

Doesn't really seem like they need to. After all, drugs are heavily regulated, and they're not having any trouble selling an unregulated -- and unproven -- substance. Why invite trouble?

>Why would they edge in on a space that doesn't make money? In other words, not every medicine is profitable (eg: commonly available herb).

So the companies selling common herbs are doing so at a loss?