In recent weeks, lawmakers in several states have moved forward with legislative proposals to permit specific strains and/or extracts of cannabis possessing high quantities of the cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD), but otherwise maintaining criminal prohibitions on the whole plant.
But is this new direction in the best interest of patients? As I wrote in a recent column for Alternet.org (republished with permission by Cannabis Now under the title “Patients Ought To Be Skeptical Of Proposed CBD-Only Legislation — Here’s Why”), I believe the answer is ‘no.’
Ultimately, patients should not be unnecessarily forced to decide between either accessing the whole plant or its isolated components. They should have safe, legal access to both, and politicians, even well-intentioned ones, should not restrict patients’ right to choose the most suitable option.
Below are excerpts from my commentary. You can read the entire text here.
Patients Ought To Be Skeptical Of Proposed CBD-Only Legislation — Here’s Why
[excerpt] If the plant ain’t broke, why fix it?
via Cannabis NowFor longtime marijuana law reformers, the ongoing political conversation surrounding CBD is instructive. It makes it clear that many politicians’ public opposition to the idea of patients using marijuana therapeutically isn’t because of supposed unanswered questions surrounding the plant’s safety or efficacy. Rather, it is because lawmakers oppose the idea of some people getting high from a naturally growing herb. (The fact that patients can get equally high or even higher from FDA-approved synthetic THC has, for whatever reason, never been an expressed concern of either lawmakers or prohibitionists.) After all, the very same politicians who argue that marijuana isn’t medicine because it hasn’t been approved by the FDA or who allege that the substance hasn’t yet been subjected to sufficient scientific scrutiny utter no such public objections to the idea of legalizing patient access to CBD – a schedule I compound that hasn’t been reviewed, much less approved by the FDA, and that has been clinically studied far less than cannabis.
Perhaps most ironically is that were it not for the advent of legalized whole plant marijuana, a policy change publicly opposed by many present day CBD-only political advocates, lawmakers (and anti-pot groups like SAM) today wouldn’t be aware of CBD, much less advocating for it. The reality is that it was the stakeholders in medical marijuana states, and those who provide for them, who have done the most to explore and promote cannabidiol as a legitimate therapeutic agent. And they were able to do so because they, unlike most federally licensed medical researchers, had access to the whole plant.
We’ve been down this road before. Not long ago, lawmakers and anti-marijuana zealots were dismissing patients’ desire to access the marijuana plant because they alleged that the THC-pill Marinol could adequately meet patients’ needs. Patients and their advocates were skeptical of lawmakers’ claims then, and properly so. Now many of these same politicians are once again dismissing patients’ calls for whole plant medicine by claiming that products and strains containing CBD alone only will suffice. Patients and their advocates ought to be equally skeptical once again.
@Ray W. – the other Ray. Stay safe, and keep reading.
@Everyone- Sorry, marijuana is a made up name from the Harry “Asslicker” days, it really doesn’t have a Spanish meaning. It was made up to represent cannabis and hemp. Cannabis to keep anyone who wasn’t white from mingling with white people. Hemp….. well,um.. because that’s what people with power will do sometimes. The word Marijuana didn’t make it into the dictionary until Harry put it there.
Farmers who grew “Indian Hemp” had no freaking clue what happened other than the government shut them down, or made them grow corn. Indian Hemp is a weed, always was always will be. It still grows wild on the roads out West. I wouldn’t smoke it but there is no reason to rip it from its roots either.
Remember the pictures of the freaky longhaired, peace sign wearing hippies of the 60s with the sunglasses and a sign around their neck saying “hemp is food”?
They were right.
Thank you Paul.
🙂 (smile)
The last states to legalize, in my prediction, will be the state that each have a Federal Reserve instiution residing within them. There are twelve. NY is one of them. If they can pass legalization despite Faked Federal Reserve, a private corporation (determined by federal courts), not a government body or part of the Treasury itself, that Congress crawls to for money to pay off deficits (like for emergent war based on false flags and falsce claims of ‘yellow cake’ uranium, or weapons grade uranium).
All the taxes pay the rich who give nothing to create the nothing-money system, they’re gauarteed 6% or greater on all “investment” returns, when the fed people give NOTHING of value, an electronic transfer of no value, to the Treasury to print what is 1 to 2% of the cash money.
The rest is debt burden created by bankers who charge interest. 98% of the money in our economy is created, out of nothing, in this way.
These same people who reap millions/billions a year for doing nothing, contributing nothing, are the reason the CSA drug war exists and continutes to exist as a known failure.
The Monetary Reform Act would end the drug war faster than any revolution, and it could be done peacefully as an act of Congress. It would eliminate the national debt, and instability caused by unnecessary inflation/deflation, and would remove the biggest a-holes on the earth from control over our government itself.
it would be a HUGE victory over tyrrany.
Don’t worry about it….when an idea’s time has come, it can’t be stopped….waste of time to play games…authoritarian control freaks overplayed their control poewer…now it’s gone….
Every day Americans are being arrested as our leaders drag their feet so they can continue their crusade to save young Americans from the evil weed by making money arresting them. HIP HIP HORAY FOR PRISONS FOR PROFIT.. One political party wants to make a better life for young people by arresting them and giving them a criminal record! Such great public servants. The leaders who claim they do not know that much about this plant are the same ones that on the other hand know what strains are good and are foaming at the mouth to pass restrictive laws.
In South Carolina, the legislator’s are considering CBD pills for kids with epilepsy. How doing something for adults who live with pain.
cbd only? That’s an ignorant stand to make…continue the ignorance except you piecemeal acceptance in order to receive something….this ignorant wall has let go of reality long ago when it corrupted the legal system to remove justice from accepted norms.
It official! Ignorance is bliss for the Prohibitionists. Everyone else can go scratch.
1.Is CBD now legal in 50 states? How do people travel by air with edible CBD for pain? Do the Feds arrest for CBD possession?
2. Moving around Denver one finds that 100% of the huge apt. complexes changed all leases in Jan.2014 to add marijuana to the cigarette ban to Colorado’s 2010 Clean Air Act…incl. indoor & private patio air. The apts. ban all possession of Mj in any form. How does a high CBD Bhang or Cheeba trash the air?
3. Please shout out to all thinking when they move to Denver they can relax at home, or on a balcony renting in Denver & indulge in pain relief w/out Big Pharma? They have a clean Indoor and Outdoor Act where you have to sit in a tree to relax. Winter may be tricky!
[Paul Armentano responds: CBD is considered under federal law to be a schedule I controlled substance.]