Customers feeling cheated by CBD are suing some of the largest companies in the industry.
Despite controversies and plenty of people predicting the end of the CBD industry — or at least a decrease in its popularity — the world’s interest in the cannabinoid continues to grow. But now, there are lawsuits being thrown around, and this might actually mean trouble for the industry.
Just like the other dietary supplements that came before them, lawsuits are targeting companies that sell CBD products without any scientific evidence that supports the medicinal benefit claims that accompany CBD.
According to a report from Stat, the companies that have been targeted include two of the largest in the industry: Charlotte’s Web and CV Sciences. These lawsuits use a language that demands a refund for all American customers who’ve purchased a product from one of these companies.
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Plaintiffs argue that the products sold are illegal because they contain CBD, which, having no scientific support, is a sham. If judges were to agree with this opinion, manufacturers would have to issue refunds for all the profits made from CBD products, a surely devastating blow for these relatively new companies.
Consumers who issued the lawsuit explain that the targeted companies engaged in “false, fraudulent, unfair, deceptive, and misleading” marketing of their CBD products by suggesting that the cannabinoid was similar to a dietary supplement.
“The implications are huge,” says Daniel Fabricant, CEO of the Natural Products Association. If the companies were to lose the lawsuit, he speculates that the blow would be catastrophic. “I’m not going to say [the CBD industry] goes away, but I think it gets pretty close to going away.”
While it’s hard to find an unbiased opinion regarding CBD — most people are either for it or against it — this is a problem that has been influenced by the FDA’s inability to make a decision regarding the compound. As long as there’s no legal framework for CBD, the industry will remain on shaky ground and subject to plenty of more accusations and lawsuits.
Though marijuana-related arrests have risen in recent years, those cases aren’t being prosecuted at the same rate.
Data complied by the FBI suggested last year that the War on Drugs wasn’t over. Using numbers submitted by 18,586 law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local level, the data showed that drug-possession arrests were on the rise following a nine-year decline. Furthermore, the New York Police Department released data to the public that found New York cops still disproportionately arrested people of color for marijuana-related offenses, despite mainstream acceptance of marijuana in all communities.
As disheartening as these statistics may be, indicating the War on Drugs may never end, something curious happened at the same time. Another piece of data tucked away in a federal report by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts indicates that history may not be repeating itself. In the report, he reviewed the trends of various crimes tried at the federal level and noted this about marijuana.
“Drug crime defendants, who accounted for 28% of total filings, grew five percent, although defendants accused of crimes associated with marijuana decreased 28%,” Roberts wrote.
Let’s break that down. The number of people charged with drug-related federal crimes is on the rise, which is commensurate with the FBI’s data. But Roberts reveals that federal prosecutors aren’t pursuing these charges at the same rate. Instead, federal prosecutions of marijuana-related crimes dropped significantly.
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A couple educated guesses as to why that’s happening. One, even though cannabis remains illegal at the federal level, various states have legalized recreational and/or medical marijuana. Two, support of marijuana reached an all-time high last year despite concerns over the national vaping crisis. There’s also the complication of the 2018 Farm Bill, which allowed for the production of hemp at the federal level, creating a loophole for the proliferation of CBD products.
This complication has caused marijuana prosecutions to plummet in Texas as well, when lawmakers legalized hemp last year in the state. Prosecutors now must prove in possession cases that defendants were carrying cannabis with THC levels over 0.3% and that requires expensive lab testing. Marijuana prosecutions in Texas have dropped by more than half as a result. According to the Texas Tribune, there were 5,668 marijuana misdemeanor cases in May 2019 (right before the state legalized hemp on June 10) to 1,919 cases in November of the same year.
Katharine Harris, a drug policy fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told the Tribune that “it means that there are fewer Texans that are getting slapped with a criminal record for marijuana possession, something that is already legal in other states.”
A recent study found that psychedelics proved to have a strong effect on nature relatedness, promoting a prolonged appreciation for nature in the two-year follow-up.
The world is hurting right now, and many are feeling the pain of a planet in destruction. We’re dealing with climate change (and climate change denial), forest fires are ravaging homes and destroying nature around the world, and we all know that Mother Nature sure likes to toss a giant natural disaster in there from time to time. Humans have both lost control of and lost touch with their natural environment.
It’s time to get back to nature, and psychedelics may be what get us there.
Researchers in London, England, investigated the association between psychedelic use and a concept they termed “nature relatedness,” or one’s level of self-identification and subjective sense of connectedness with nature.
The study entitled “From Egoism to Ecoism: Psychedelics Increase Nature Relatedness in a State-Mediated and Context-Dependent Manner” was published in December 2019 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The study was conducted at the Centre for Psychedelic Research’s Department of Brain Sciences at Imperial College in London, UK, and was led by Hannes Kettner and Sam Gandy.
While the study wasn’t restricted to one psychedelic, the researchers looked at the “healing and divination purposes” for which substances like DMT, LSD, psilocybin (“magic mushrooms”), mescaline, ayahuasca, iboga, and salvia are used, hypothesizing that the use of these substances, especially in the long term, are strongly correlated to nature relatedness or that feeling of being “one” with our natural environment. The researchers cite “ego-dissolution” as one of the catalysts of this connection between psychedelics and nature relatedness and further hypothesize “a positive effect of natural settings on psychological outcomes following psychedelic use.”
The Methodology
The researchers conducted their study through an online survey, asking people who planned to use psychedelics in the near future to complete a survey. The beginning 634 participants received baseline assessments looking at demographics, psychological well-being via the Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale, a nature relatedness scale, and the amount of lifetime psychedelic use.
One day after the psychedelic experience, participants were asked to complete surveys that looked at some pretty incredible things about the human experience. These measures included a mystical experience questionnaire, which assessed positive mood, perceived transcendence of time and space, a sense of ineffability, and mystical feelings as key components of mystical-type peak experiences; the ego-dissolution inventory, measuring acute disintegration of the sense of self; and the challenging experience questionnaire, which includes items about fear, grief, physical distress, insanity, isolation, death, and paranoia.
The audio-visual effects of the psychedelics were also measured to understand the extent to which the substance altered sight and perception. Participants were asked to identify whether their psychedelic experience took place in nature, with an additional item measuring to what extent access to nature was perceived to have influenced the overall quality of the experience.
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The participants also were invited to complete surveys two and four weeks after the psychedelic experience, and then two years after that, for the researchers to understand the longitudinal effects of nature relatedness. Sixty-four participants participated in the two-year follow-up.
Psychedelics Increase Nature Relatedness
“Our primary hypothesis of increased nature relatedness following a psychedelic experience was confirmed,” concluded the researchers in the Discussion section of the study; the researchers “providing the first empirical evidence for a causative role of psychedelic use in the enhancement of nature relatedness in a large sample of healthy participants.”
Across all participants, psychedelics proved to have a strong effect on nature relatedness, with this sentiment being elevated directly post-use and promoting a prolonged appreciation for nature in the two-year follow-up.
Why Is This Important?
We all know that taking time to be in nature is part of a healthy lifestyle. You can’t deny that taking time to feel the sun on your face, breathe in the smells of nature, and sit still in the quietness of solace stimulates serotonin and makes you feel simply incredible. However, not enough of us take time to connect — truly connect — to our natural environment as a method of healing and self-discovery.
As the authors note, previous researchers have argued that “experiences in natural settings can foster an empathic connection to nature and the humble positioning of one’s self within it, which is less likely to apply to man-made environments.” The authors note that previous accounts of psychedelics in nature represent the opportunity to find “profound levels of identification or merging with the natural world.”
Other researchers have uncovered that those who use psychedelics within a natural setting experience “dissolution of boundaries and awe-inducing feelings of unity with nature during peak psychedelic effects.” The authors have also observed that even one experience with psychedelics can produce an “enduring” change in one’s perception of nature.
Spending time in nature and its benefits for health have been studied for years, with meta-analyses pooling data from almost 150 studies, looking at 290 million participants, showing that time in nature can have significant physical health benefits, including reduced risk of type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, premature death, preterm birth and reductions in stress, high blood pressure and cholesterol.
Photo by Wikipedia user Erik Fenderson
In addition to these physical benefits, exposure to nature also produces incredible mental health benefits, including increases directed-attention abilities, increased attentional capacity and positive emotions, and the ability to reflect on a life problem. Nature exposure has been associated with decreased anxiety, decreased stress, a decrease in rumination, increased vitality, psychological restoration, and enhanced prosocial orientation.
Researcher Conclusions
The researchers conclude that their data “imply a reliable and robust positive association between psychedelic use and nature relatedness” with the correlation between psychedelics use and nature relatedness getting stronger with continued use among nature experience.
They observed increase in nature relatedness correlated with increases in psychological wellbeing, which remained significantly elevated two years after the psychedelic experience. The researchers finally conclude that “these findings point to the potential of psychedelics to induce enduring positive changes in the way humans relate to their natural environments.”
The Way Forward with Psychedelics
The psychedelics industry, as we know it, is relatively new, and some insiders of the psychedelic movement credit cannabis as what paved the way for psychedelics to gain momentum.
Green Market Report has been following the psychedelics movement closely, eagerly watching our friends in psychedelics make amazing strides. Late last year, we reported on Field Trip Ventures, co-founded by cannabis industry veteran Ronan Levy, which announced that they’d be opening a psychedelics research center in Jamaica. We also reported on Orthogonal Thinker, who had announced a capital raise of $4 million to help bring psilocybin to more people.
We are yet to see a projected worth of the emergent psychedelics industry, but if the buzz is any indication, this new industry is one to get in on while it’s just beginning to take hold.
Simply put, kids like weed, and they are finding ways to get their hands on it, just like you did with booze back in the day.
It’s officially 2020, so it’s time you finally realize that much of the puff, puff, pitch spewing from the mouths of die-hard cannabis advocacy groups is just talk. They may tell you that the legalization of marijuana is a sure-fire way to keep your kids from getting stoned on the regular, or that establishing a taxed and regulated market makes weed unappealing to whippersnappers. In reality, little Timmy and Janie are more interested in pot than ever before.
That’s right, the secret is out. Parental figures from all walks of life should consider themselves warned. The cold hard fact of the matter is that teens are destined to get more red-eyed and ripped in the new year because, well, it’s a trend that has been swelling ever since Colorado and Washington became the first states to go green. Simply put, kids like weed, and they are finding ways to get their hands on it, just like you did with booze back in the day.
For a while, it was starting to look as if the claims that legal weed was boring in the eyes of the great American adolescent were valid. In fact, a National Survey on Drug Use and Health published in 2017 showing pot use in teens (ages 12-17) indicated that they were smoking less marijuana in all but one of the five states that had ended prohibition. This was the tale of the tape spanning from 2014 to 2016 — right when adult use was first starting to take hold across the country.
Of course, this gave the pro-pot folks some vindication because all of the sudden, there was finally some validity to the claims they had been feeding everyone from the public to politicians in their fight to bring weed to the mainstream. The stats also reported that teens were losing their lust for alcohol, tobacco and heroin, too. And parents rejoiced that the kids of today were becoming a little more straight edge and boring than when they were coming up in the world.
Photo by OlegMalyshev/Getty Images
But then it happened. Teens, all of a sudden, started getting high. Reports began to surface a couple of years ago showing that while the kids of today were, in fact, smarter about avoiding the dangers of booze and cigarettes, that wasn’t stopping them from exploring the wastelands of inebriation with the help of our old friend Mary Jane.
Researchers from Columbia University said in 2018 that kids have bought into the “marijuana is safer” hype and are now dabbling in the doobie more than anything else. The study showed that while the youth from the 1990s was most curious about cigarettes, that all changed over the past decade. They have since kicked the Marlboro man down the dusty trail, and now, cannabis has become the nitty-gritty of teenage rebellion.
Even the latest Monitoring the Future survey from the University of Michigan, which is paid for by the federal government, shows the youth has gone wild for weed. Pot use among high school seniors has nearly doubled from where it was 30 years ago. And Wall Street investment firms are telling their investors that juvenile weed consumption is a solid reason to stay the course when it comes to their pot-infused portfolios. Because, as it was so eloquently put by Cowen and Company, “teenage cannabis consumption has interestingly remained fairly steady.” Therefore, they will likely grow up to become the cannabis industry’s customers of tomorrow.
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So, while everyone is making predictions for 2020, mine is that we will continue to see higher rates of teenage pot consumption sweeping the country. The black market is still too strong to prevent kids from getting their hands on weed. It’s like they always say, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Now, that doesn’t mean that increased pot consumption in this demographic is going to create a population of zombie burnouts and ultimately contribute to the demise of civil society. There’s still no evidence that pot use is a gateway to harder drugs, and the rate of dependency is extremely low. That means parents shouldn’t flip their script if they discover their teen is part of this new toking trend.
It’s just a shift in the scene. Still, it’s one they say could stunt the growth of their maturing brains. But considering that these fiends are already intellectually stifled by cell phones, social media, video games and other digital lesions of the soul, I’m going out on a limb and saying that not much more damage can be done. We’ve always known that times were a-changing, but nobody ever promised it would be for the better.
The many layers of marijuana reform laws often hit those experiencing devastating illnesses particularly hard, especially given the fact that marijuana research is still stalled in the US.
Emily* is an up and coming professional in the east coast, living with an invisible chronic illness that not only causes pain, but makes working 40 hours a week nearly impossible. The solution that Emily believes has saved her career, comes in the form of a vaping “pen” and THC. Living in a state without medical marijuana access, Emily feels torn.
On one hand, she believes marijuana has helped her elevate her career by allowing her to show up to the office, but on the other, she lives in a constant fear that she describes as an entity slowly circling above her head. “There are days I don’t know how I could function without the help of my vaping pen,” Emily explains. “At some point, I might have to move, leaving my family to be able to have access to a drug that my lawmakers believe only harms me.” And Emily isn’t alone.
Todd*, a 57-year old in Indiana recently shared his story about being a first-time cannabis user. After a debilitating illness, Todd experienced a severe reaction from a pharmaceutical medicine which caused pain that was almost intolerable. Todd tried cannabis as a last resort for the excruciating nerve pain and soon found it worked better than any alternative.
Todd explained, “I immediately noticed two things when I started lighting up: First, the nerve pain was gone within minutes. Secondly, my ulcerative colitis symptoms were alleviated.” In fact, Todd’s restroom frequency went from 7 times each day to three per week. While his condition will follow him for the rest of his life, cannabis seemed to quiet hid digestive system. His care team was baffled, and with a strict diet in place, Todd has found a life-changing alternative to expensive and often side-effect-ridden pharmaceutical medicines.
However, as a business owner, Todd is forced to take a massive risk for both his business and health which has placed him in an impossible situation: He must either move to Michigan or Illinois, (where marijuana is accessible,) or break the law. “The reality is, I’m off all medicine right now,” Todd noted, “It’s really unbelievable.”
What Todd describes is well-known in research circles and those who experience similar effects on their gastrointestinal condition with THC. The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation issued a statement in 2018 in support of research and findings around marijuana’s impact on the gut.
Long-studied for its effect on CB1 and CB2 receptors in the gut, the journal Gastroenterology and Hepatology explained the importance of studying THC and CBD for those struggling with colitis and other gastrointestinal issues, stating that:
“The most-studied receptors, CB1 and CB2, are expressed in the gastrointestinal tract, enteric nervous system, brain, and immune cells, which are areas of interest in patients with IBD. Activation of these receptors may result in gastrointestinal effects. A 2009 study in a mouse model of colitis found that when the CB1/CB2 receptors were activated, there was a decrease in inflammation. This provides a potential rationale as to the role of cannabis in the management of IBD and IBD-related symptoms.”
Photo by Tinnakorn Jorruang/Getty Images
Health equity starts with accessibility
Todd may have reprieve. One reform bill in Indiana is changing the conversation around marijuana, and aims to research underlining effects of marijuana criminalization. Led by State Senator Karen Tallian (D-Ogden Dunes) the bill hopes to decriminalize possession for smaller amounts of marijuana (under one ounce.) State Senator Karen Tallian (D-Ogden Dunes) shared exclusively:
“It’s clear Indiana has to address its outdated and confusing cannabis laws. Our state legislature has been afraid to confront the entire cannabis question and takes every opportunity to stop debate. In 2018 alone, there were more than 22,000 arrests for marijuana possession in Indiana. We have to stop spending our community money, time and efforts on this issue when there are so many more pressing priorities. Given the fact that our neighbors in Illinois and Michigan have both legalized marijuana, it certainly makes no sense for Indiana to continue with its obsolete policies. Decriminalization is the minimum that we should be doing to stop putting Hoosiers behind bars for something that is legal in our neighboring states.”
Senator Tallian is gaining support quickly with NORML, which is mobilizing in Indiana on the heels of both Illinois and Michigan electing to decriminalize marijuana within the past month. A study completed in November 2019 by Pew Research Center, showcases that over two-thirds of Americans support legalization of marijuana. Among its findings, Pew noted:
The share of U.S. adults who oppose legalization has fallen from 52% in 2010 to 32% today.
An overwhelming majority of U.S. adults (91%) say marijuana should be legal for medical use while 59% of individuals polled stated it should be legal for recreational use.
Only 8% of those polled stated it should remain illegal in all circumstances. The silent generation, (born between 1928 and 1945) had a rate of opposition at 64%.
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Dispensary drought
Even more worrisome, a lack of access tends to leave those already marginalized with lower incomes without options, even when dispensaries are in place. Dr. Julia Arnsten, chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System penned a piece that described in detail the barriers to new methods of care and health disparities that are beginning to take place. She said:
“Without a more equitable system, this new health care disparity will become entrenched alongside so many others, leaving many of those most in need of medical cannabis without access to it.”
Describing how marijuana can be used to avoid dependence on opioids, Dr. Arnsten explains that data gathered from the last two years of New York’s Medical Marijuana program pinpoints an important finding:
“More than 70% of registered patients seek medical cannabis to treat chronic or severe pain, often in an effort to avoid prescription opioid medications.”
While the doctor advocates for patients to purchase marijuana from legal dispensaries, many still obtain marijuana from other unregulated sources. The reasons, the doctor explains, have to do with cost, transportation woes, a lack of insurance coverage and the inability to pay via credit card.
The many layers of marijuana reform laws often hit those experiencing devastating illnesses particularly hard, especially given the fact that marijuana research is still stalled in the United States due to the drug’s classification. Whether drought of inaccessibility, the effect of marijuana legislation has real-world effects on family, neighbors and those in the community.
*The names have been changed to protect the identities of those interviewed for this article.
This week’s column: Justin Bieber’s much awaited return, Usher’s collab with Ella Mai and a new song from Raye.
This Week’s Music is a weekly column that discusses the weeks’ best, worst, and most interesting songs. We try to select songs of different artists and genres to keep things interesting and to please a variety of music fans.
This week features Justin Bieber’s much awaited return, Usher’s collaboration with Ella Mai and a new song from Raye. Check them out!
Pop
Justin Bieber – Yummy
After a year-long hiatus, Bieber is back and, if this is the kind of work he’s making now, he should have stayed gone. “Yummy” is awful, a rip-off of all of the worst aspects of modern hip hop without adding a personal twist or even some coherence. It’s three minutes of sound torture.
Another artist making a comeback is Usher, who, unlike Bieber, seems to be more aware of his musical surroundings, partnering with Ella Mai and making something that’s fun and sexy. Mai and Usher’s voices compliment each other, creating an old school R&B song that capitalizes on each of their talents.
Raye – Please Don’t Touch
The best song of this week’s column conveniently comes from its least famous artist. Rachel Keen, aka Raye, is a British 20-something-year old who’s primed to make a big splash in 2020. “Please Don’t Touch” is melancholic and woozy in all the right ways, smart enough to trick you into dancing your heartbreak away. The song’s sad and reflective lyrics are perfectly hidden behind a glossy production that’s accessible and fun.
The ban would barely impact the use of vaping devices among the youth, according to one analyst, and will simply burden adults who are trying to switch.
The Trump administration is set to ban most fruit and mint-flavored vapes in an attempt to curb teen usage.
The modified policy would pull pod-based flavored vaporizers off the market that are made by companies such as Juul, NJOY Holdings and Reynolds American.
The policy would still allow menthol- and tobacco-flavored e-cigarette pods, as well as “open-tank” vaping devices.
Analyst Says Ban Will Have Hardly Any Impact On Use
Reason Foundation policy analyst and Young Voices tobacco policy contributor Jacob Rich commented on the news for Fox Business.
Only 23% of teens say that flavors play any role in their choice, with curiosity being the No. 1 reason for trying vaping by far, Rich said.
Vapes have helped reduce smoking rates among all age groups, he said.
The ban would barely impact the use of vaping devices among the youth, in Rich’s view, and will simply burden adults who are trying to switch, he said.
Photo by lindsayfox via Pixabay
Siegel Asks Whether Ban Is Comprehensive Enough
American physician Dr. Mark Siegel also joined Fox Business to talk about the ban, and said that it almost goes far enough, referring to so-called “puff bars,” or disposable imitation cartridges that are flavored and include nicotine.
“There’s a culture of vaping, and a lot of the same people who are vaping e-cigs are also turning around and vaping marijuana-based products, but before they used to have a joint, and now they have vaping devices. So I think it can have a carryover and indirect effect.”
The actress wants to help destigmatize cannabis and provide easy access to the largest amount of people possible, including kids.
A few weeks ago, I spoke with Bella Thorne, Disney Channel child actress turned singer, an book author for a Forbesarticle. We went into cannabis, sex, and other taboo topics, as we discussed the launch of her new weed brand Forbidden Flowers, released in partnership with Glass House Group.
But Bella, who’s always been a rebel, cares about people. She’s a rebel with a cause – or a few, to be honest.
One of them is destigmatizing cannabis and providing easy access to the largest amount of people possible, including kids.
“I’m sorry, but if marijuana is going to stop your kid from committing suicide, or if weed is going to help your kids who has eating disorders; or if weed is going to help your kid with their overwhelming anxiety… Just get over it. There’s much worse things than weed,” Bella told me at the time.
I decided to circle back with her on what’s next in her weed-related plans. I was expecting her to bring up a new line of edibles, or THC-infused lubes, or something like that. Instead, she raised the issue of social equity and record expungement.
“I don’t know the best way to go about it just yet, but I really want to find a way to get people to pay attention to of those still incarcerated for marijuana charges,” she said. “It’s just absolutely ridiculous… You’ve got a person in jail for manslaughter, and their prison sentence is shorter than that of someone who was caught caring and eighth of weed in their in their pocket.”
Photo by Anton Petrus/Getty Images
She added, flustered: “I’m sorry, what? How does this make sense? How does our justice system make sense?” For reference, as explained in this recent article on the “Last Prisoner Project,” a program aimed at getting people in jail for cannabis out of prison and back into society, more than 40,000 people are currently serving time for cannabis-related offenses in the U.S. alone.
Bella asks: How is it possible that, “at this point of cannabis being so legalized and so normal that you can literally go down the street and puff a smoke,” people are still in jail for some weed?
“So, I’m trying to think of ways to get people to pay attention; to hear their names; to kind of blast their names in our faces; because it feels that, as a society we can’t ignore the people that we put in jail… We can’t, as a society, just put people in jail and then go like, ‘Okay, bye now! See you never again,’ and just forget about them forever… I just hate this so much. It’s crazy
It comes as no surprise that CBD oil was the most popular product across 30 different states, since most CBD companies focus on producing CBD oil tinctures as the first step to their business.
By Melena Gurganus.
Interest in CBD products is continually on the rise, especially in the eyes of Google.
People search the internet giant for different CBD application styles all year round—but which products are the most searched for in each state? Remedy Review did some research on Google Trends to find the most-searched CBD product for all 50 states (and the District of Columbia).
Here’s how the findings stacked up:
It comes as no surprise that CBD oil was the most popular product across 30 different states, since most CBD companies focus on producing CBD oil tinctures as the first step to their business. Other products like CBD creams and gummies tied for second place, each winning 6 states.
Search interest in CBD vapes was isolated to one region of the country, as all five states that searched the most for CBD vape products were located in the South. The popularity of CBD gummies was paramount in the Northeast, as 5 out of 6 states with the most search interest in those products were located in this corner of the country. However, Hawaii beat out all of those states for the most overall interest in CBD gummies.
Colorado was another outlier in the data findings, as it was the only state to express the most search interest in CBD isolate. This is especially intriguing given the wide availability of legal cannabis products within the state, yet people are most interested in finding something that only contains CBD.
Listed below you can find the total list of states and the most popular CBD product for each, along with badges to denote the states with the most search interest for a particular product.
The Buzz on CBD
CBD, or cannabidiol, is a cannabis compound that has become increasingly popular in the past few years. Many people use CBD products as a way to promote general health and overall wellness, but more scientific research is needed to validate the effectiveness of these products. Additionally, the CBD market is a highly unregulated place, and it isn’t always easy to find the best hemp extracts. Because of this, it’s necessary for consumers to research various CBD companies to find the one that’s right for them to ensure they are getting a high quality CBD product.
Melena is the Associate Editor of Remedy Review where she aims to advance the wellbeing of people by informing readers on CBD and other natural health alternatives.
The preceding article does not represent the opinion of Benzinga and has not been edited.
Like CBD, CBG is among the 100+ molecules in the cannabis plant. Unlike CBD, the legal status of CBG products may be less problematic.
Looking back, 2019 was the year of cannabidiol (CBD) in the cannabis industry. CBD continued to make its way into countless consumer products, from sodas to sports bras. The CBD craze was a long time coming: we began covering that cannabinoid back in 2015, when industry began promoting CBD products in earnest and the FDA fired off warning letters (a time-honored tradition at this point) telling people to stop making health claims, and to stop selling this stuff altogether.
Recently, another cannabinoid has begun getting a lot of buzz inside the cannabis industry, much like CBD before it. That cannabinoid is CBG (cannabigerol). Like CBD, CBG is among the 100+ molecules in the cannabis plant. From a scientific perspective, CBG is unique for the “precursor” role it plays in synthesizing other cannabinoids–including THC and CBD–and in synthesizing the overall chemical composition of the plant. From a regulatory perspective, the legal status of CBG products may be less problematic than CBD products.
Why is that? First, some context. We have explained on this blog that it is illegal to add CBD to many products, in FDA’s view, due to the “drug exclusion rule.” According to FDA, products containing CBD cannot be sold as dietary supplements because CBD was investigated and approved by FDA as a new drug (Epidiolex). If something is a non-exempt “drug” it cannot be placed in the food stream under the Food Drug & Cosmetic Act. We wouldn’t mind seeing someone take a run at FDA for this interpretation with respect to CBD, but right now that’s the framework.
Unlike CBD, CBG not been approved as a drug, and FDA itself has acknowledged that “parts of the cannabis plant that do not contain THC or CBD might fall outside the scope of the [drug exclusion rule].” If CBG is approved as a drug at some point down the line, it also seems likely that the drug exclusion rule would not apply: this is because the rule contains an exception for substances marketed as foods or dietary supplements prior to any FDA clinical investigation. People are already marketing CBG products as foods and dietary supplements.
Photo by FatCamera/Getty Images
This domestic legal framework, alongside the fact that CBG can be lawfully produced and extracted from hemp under the 2018 Farm Bill, seemingly gives CBG a viable legal runway. Of course, everything here is conditioned on manufacturers and sellers steering clear of unapproved health claims.
The international legal framework seems promising as well. CBG is not listed on the schedules set out in the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 and does not appear to be controlled by any other international treaty. This means that countries are not required to control CBG. The cannabinoid is likely legal under international law and potentially ripe for export.
Before CBG takes off in a major way, two things probably have to happen. The first is that consumers need to take interest. It’s hard to know exactly how that will play out, although industry may feel incentivized to promote CBG given its clear potential and the possibility of avoiding FDA entanglements. It does appear that CBG, like CBD, CBN, and other cannabinoids, contains promising medical applications– even if they should not be advertised. The U.S. National Center for Complimentary and Integrative Health, for example, announced its intent last year to research CBG for pain management. Industry white papers have been written on CBG research as well. (For a comprehensive offering by Hemptown USA, go here.)
Photo by Bloomberg Creative Photos/Getty Images
The second thing that must happen is for CBG to be grown at scale so that prices drop. CBG genetics are coming into refinement, but CBG distillate remains about six times the price of CBD distillate at wholesale. High prices are often good for farmers, but certain producers may hesitate to move in, given that: 1) CBG is also more expensive than CBD to extract, and 2) plants must be harvested early to produce pure CBG (before it synthesizes into other cannabinoids). Ultimately, the early harvest requirement may not be all that bad given today’s alternative– namely, growing hemp for CBD and dealing with the new and very problematic “total THC testing protocol” adopted by USDA for finished hemp products.
We will continue to track CBG as this story plays out in 2020 and beyond. For now, it seems that this cannabinoid may have a promising role to play and that hemp growers and processors should take a hard look at CBG this spring.
Vince Sliwoski is an attorney at Harris Bricken, a law firm with lawyers in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Barcelona, and Beijing. This story was originally published on the Canna Law Blog.
