and elevated mood.
Sellers in the UK are careful not to claim any specific medical benefits
for the products because of a lack of clinical evidence, so they are
instead marketed as food supplements. In this, they are supported by
breathless, uncritical media reports on CBD use for airily unspecified
“wellbeing” purposes.
There is now no denying the medicinal value of CBD and THC – not even
by the British government, which for years maintained that lie even
as it rubberstamped the cultivation and export of the world’s largest
medicinal cannabis crop, by GW Pharmaceuticals (Sativex).
But the landmark decision in November 2018 to allow UK doctors to
prescribe cannabis under extremely limited circumstances, inspired by
Lab tests for the CMC report analysed high-street offerings and found
that more than half of the most popular CBD oils sold do not contain the
level of CBD promised on the label.
And, a look at the label of those products shows that many are sold at
such low concentrations that even the guesstimated doses, measured in
drops, cannot deliver more than a scant few milligrammes of the active
ingredient – whereas medical trials use many times more.
Still, mislabelled or low-dose products pale into insignificance
when compared to a US case reported in the journal Clinical
Toxicology in April.
A family unwittingly dosed their child with what was claimed to be CBD
oil, but instead contained the synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonist
AB-Fubinaca. This chemical is better known as an ingredient in the
shortcut to oblivion otherwise known as spice.
Britain is poorly prepared for the wide-ranging changes to cannabis
law that are flowering worldwide. British hemp farmers face serious
commercial disadvantage as CBD may be legally extracted only from
the stem and leaves of hemp crops, not from the flower, where the
cannabinoids are produced in greatest profusion.
Most CBD is therefore imported: a wasted opportunity to
create and control – and tax – a new industry.
‘Medicinal cannabis products immeasurably improve the
epilepsy of Billy Caldwell (above, with his mother, Charlotte).’
What is clear is that legal reform on cannabis, while welcome, is not
moving anywhere near quickly enough to benefit millions of patients.
Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
the cases of Billy Caldwell and Alfie Dingley, whose epilepsy is improved
immeasurably by medicinal cannabis products containing both THC and
CBD, has left many in a limbo: knowing or believing that cannabis offers
a cure, yet remaining unable to access it.
And so as media reports of miraculous cures for desperate people
proliferate, the CBD industry is growing fast. Market research
commissioned by the thinktank Centre for Medicinal Cannabis (CMC)
estimates that the CBD market in the UK could be worth almost £1bn
a year by 2025, equivalent in size to the current entire UK herbal
supplement market.
And, in many cases, the industry is taking
Consumers for a ride.
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Scientists and politicians are, thankfully, catching up with hundreds of
years of folk wisdom: it’s not news to anyone who regularly smokes a
spliff that cannabis is relaxing, or that it can help you sleep far more
soundly than a glass of red wine, or improve your mood.
The interplay between THC, CBD, and the hundreds of other active
compounds in the cannabis plant could one day be isolated, identified,
tested and proven to offer symptomatic help or even a cure for dozens
of life-threatening conditions. But decades of pointless prohibition
based on specious moral arguments have prevented proper medical
research that could have benefited millions.
The CBD market urgently needs proper regulation and more
broadly, both the THC and CBD sectors demand the creation
of a new medical model that accommodates the complexity
of a plant that has been used as a medicine by humans for
thousands of years. q
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