Standing in the way, however, has been the FDA.
A full year after hemp was legalized in the U.S. (and 23 years after medicinal cannabis was first legalized in California), the FDA has done nothing in terms of creating a regulatory framework for CBD commerce.
What it has done is to issue regulatory warnings to cannabis companies about health claims associated with CBD. And it publishes its own pseudo-science on cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive cannabinoid in the cannabis plant.
The FDA refuses to allow any “health claims” made by cannabis companies with respect to their CBD products, even though mountains of empirical evidence exist of the therapeutic uses of CBD. Its reason? No official (i.e. government) research exists to support such health applications.
The Catch-22?
The federal government has refused to study these therapeutic uses of CBD. Consequently, no “official proof” exists to support these health claims. A Catch-22 of U.S. government corruption.
The Ostrich Strategy.
The FDA (and the entire U.S. federal government) buries its head in the sand and then simply repeats over and over “I see no proof that CBD has therapeutic uses.”
Then there is the pseudo-science.
The FDA said it “has seen only limited data about CBD safety and these data point to real risks that need to be considered before taking CBD for any reason.” The agency lays out possible risks of using CBD, such as liver injury, drug interactions and possibly even negative effects on male reproductive health. [emphasis mine]
Nonsense. The so-called real risks are nothing but baseless speculation and gross exaggeration.
The (supposed) “drug interactions” and “negative effects on male reproductive health” are pure speculation by the FDA.
The “possible risks of…liver injury” are supposed to be based on real science. It goes like this.
A small percentage of epilepsy patients being given an ultra-concentrated CBD drug showed elevated levels of a “marker” that can be a warning sign of future liver disease.
Here the numbers need to be put into context.
Tests were done on GW Pharma’s Epidiolex (CBD-based) drug for epilepsy. Patients were given up to 1,800 mg’s of CBD per day!
Understand the incredibly massive dosage involved here. The high potency cannabis cultivated today can contain roughly 20% CBD. Even then, it would require 9,000 mg’s of high-potency cannabis (9 grams of high-potency raw cannabis) per day to reach that level of CBD consumption.
Even heavy cannabis users don’t consume nearly that much cannabis daily. Further context is necessary.
Cannabinoids like CBD and THC are extremely potent. And the high-potency cannabis grown today is literally 10 times as strong as cannabis in its natural form (typically <2% potency).
It would require 90 grams of natural cannabis (more than 3 ounces of cannabis per day) to consume that much CBD via smoking – the most efficient means of delivering cannabinoids. No one could possibly smoke that much cannabis in a day.
Additional context is even more helpful.
A “tolerable upper intake level” (UL) is defined as the maximum level of total chronic daily intake judged to be “unlikely to pose a risk of adverse health effects to human”. Not absolute safety.
Compare CBD to essential nutrients like zinc and iron, which are also fat soluble.
- CBD is 40 times less toxic than iron supplements
- CBD is 45 times less toxic than zinc supplements
Even a relatively non-toxic mineral supplement like magnesium (which we need in abundance) is still roughly 5 times as toxic as CBD.
In fact, test results on Epidiolex roughly conform to the same risk threshold as consuming equal amounts of vitamin C, which has a UL of approximately 2,000 mg’s per day.
This is incredible.
Vitamin C is water soluble. This means it is rapidly processed and passed through the body. Typically, water soluble substances are passed through our systems in roughly a day.
CBD is fat soluble. It is stored in the human body (via fat cells). It takes roughly a month for the human body to fully pass fat soluble substances.
Consume 2,000 mg’s of vitamin C one day and by the next day it is practically gone.
Consume 1,800 mg’s of CBD (via Epidiolex) and much of that CBD is retained in the body for weeks. And the next day’s dosage. And the next. And the next.
The cumulative accumulation of CBD in the human body is enormous. Even so, it takes roughly 1,800 mg’s of regular CBD consumption per day to begin to demonstrate any sort of health risk.
This means that in absolute terms, CBD is much less toxic than vitamin C.
Then there are opiates (and opioids).
With opiates, even the raw form of this substance (morphine) is unsafe for long-term consumption -- at any level. Opioids, the ultra-concentrated/ultra-toxic/ultra-addictive chemical derivatives created by Big Pharma kill more than 40,000 Americans per year via overdose, at tiny fractions of the CBD dosage in Epidiolex.
The FDA fast-tracked Big Pharma’s ultra-dangerous opioids. But it is refusing to approve and regulate ultra-safe CBD.
When was the last time the FDA issued a public warning to consumers about vitamin C consumption, or even relatively toxic nutrients like zinc and iron? And all these substances are widely available without any FDA restrictions at all. Not CBD.
Corruption.
The FDA isn’t regulating CBD. It’s inventing pathetically flimsy excuses about why it refuses to regulate CBD.
CBD is not harmful to the human liver, in any dosage that would be even remotely normal as a health supplement.
Yes, people can “abuse” CBD – just like they can abuse iron or zinc or even vitamin C. There is more than enough mineral content in a multivitamin container to do serious harm to someone deliberately trying to injure themselves.
CBD is no more “dangerous” than that. Hopefully, the FDA is fooling no one with its corrupt charade.