Good news: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released preliminary guidance last week on clinical research for cannabis-related products. As with traditional drugs, clinical trials and a drug review and approval process will be required.
Bad news: despite much wider interest, there are still no rules forthcoming for CBD-based products.
The 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp again after many years, left CBD neither here nor there. The bill didn’t exactly legalize CBD, but it did move enforcement from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to the FDA.
Given the widespread consumer use of CBD products to treat a broad range of conditions, you would hope that a system is in place for testing and evaluating products before too long, because the CBD market in many ways still resembles the Wild, Wild West. The FDA recently submitted a report to Congress showing that many such products did not contain the quantity of CBD claimed on the label, and in some cases contained none at all. The term “snake-oil salesman” comes to mind.
And considering the December 2019 warning from the FDA to consumers that “CBD has the potential to harm you,” which cited an absence of the very testing standards the nation is waiting for, you would again hope for some forward progress on the issue.
The FDA acknowledges both the high level of public interest in CBD products and the need for a set of standards and testing protocols. But that high demand has resulted in a huge proliferation of products, and that further complicates the picture.
As a company supporting the medical and recreational marijuana industries, we’re pleased to see progress on guidelines for testing and standardizing cannabis products. Now it’s time to do the same for CBD and get the illegitimate products off the market.
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