FDA Is Asking for Public Comments about CBD

The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently soliciting public comments about the therapeutic benefits and abuse liability of various controlled substances, including cannabidiol (CBD).

The FDA will consider these comments prior to preparing a formal response to the World Health Organization, which is considering placing these substances within their international drug scheduling code.

There has been much confusion about the legality of CBD in the U.S., which is based on the source of the oil—a hemp or a cannabis plant.

What we do know is that CBD has tremendous healing powers and the DEA should not have categorized it as a Schedule I controlled substance, which is exactly what it did this past December when it sneakily created a new drug code for CBD, entitled “Establishment of a New Drug Code for Marihuana Extract.” 

The DEA’s shocking announcement that “marihuana extract” was to be treated as a controlled substance essentially gave themselves license to better track which scientists are studying marijuana and which ones are researching CBD and other extracts, totally obstructing important medical research.

For this reason, NORML called this recent search for comments on CBD a “little silly that the FDA is seeking public comment on a topic that would normally be judged based on the merits of evidence-based science and data.”

But still, they’re asking, so let’s speak up and tell the FDA what we know about CBD’s therapeutic properties, lack of abuse potential andtrials that have found CBD to be non-toxic and well-tolerated in human subjects, especially for treating epilepsy in children.

Seventeen states explicitly recognize, by state-law, CBD as a therapeutic agent.

In addition, the head of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) publicly acknowledged that CBD is “a safe drug with no addictive effects.”

A request for public comment should never go unfulfilled, says NORML, and the organization has made it very easy for all of us to do so. Get clicking, please.

Click here to submit formal comments to the FDA now.