Another key natural medicine to bite the dust? Action Alert!
The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is moving against cannabidiol (CBD), a supplement used to control pain and inflammation. The circumstances are extremely suspicious.
Late last year, the DEA published a final rule that classifies marijuana and hemp extracts, including CBD, as Schedule 1 controlled substances—a category that includes heroin, LSD, mescaline, and MDMA. Note that none of the CBD extracts contains significant amounts of the psychoactive chemical in marijuana—only the non-psychoactive painkilling chemicals.
There are thousands of published scientific studies on CBD and its beneficial health effects on pain, inflammation, seizures, rheumatoid arthritis, and other inflammatory conditions. CBD is available as a dietary supplement.
The DEA’s move sent a shockwave through the CBD industry, with many producers fearing a crackdown. If past is prologue, these fears are completely justified.
This is not a merely irrational move by the DEA—it’s a deeply suspicious one. The US government holds a patent on CBD that covers the use of CBD to protect the brain from degeneration and the treatment of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Sound familiar? The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been obsessed with natural remedies that can treat Alzheimer’s. So far, the agency has attacked supplements such as picamilon, vinpocetine, and pyridoxamine, essentially clearing the field for expensive Big Pharma-owned Alzheimer’s drugs that they know don’t work. The government seems to be employing the same playbook against CBD.
One of Big Pharma’s most loyal puppets is Sen. Claire McCaskill. A powerful democrat from Missouri, she has waged an all-out war against vinpocetine. ANH-USA has been in the trenches fighting these monopolist actions by Big Pharma since our founding. With such powerful friends doing the pharmaceutical industry’s bidding, we shouldn’t be surprised that once again a brain health supplement is under attack—though in this case, CBD is much more than a brain supplement.
There is, after all, big money in Alzheimer’s. Everyone gets old, and many people get senile, right? At a certain point in the future, every old person in the country may be prescribed an Alzheimer medication—if the drug companies can finally find one that doesn’t flop. Hence the motivation to push out the competition.
So, on one hand, the government is saying there is “no accepted medical use” for CBD by classifying it as a Schedule 1 drug, which would normally remove CBD from the market as a supplement. On the other hand, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a patent that says there are important medical uses for it!
Is this an example of government incompetence? Collusion? We can’t say for sure. Both possibilities are plausible. But we do know that the results are all too common: consumers lose, and Big Pharma wins. Except for one major consideration: consumers are also voters. It’s time to make your voice heard once again!
Big Pharma has in fact already “moved in” on CBD. GW Pharmaceuticals has a CBD-based drug in Phase III trials for the treatment of severe epilepsy. Even the FDA is getting in on the action. In a wave of warning letters sent to supplement companies marketing CBD products, the agency claims that CBD does not meet the definition of a dietary supplement because (a) it is currently being investigated as a drug and (b) there is no evidence that CBD has previously been marketed as a dietary supplement. “Not marketed as a supplement”? The FDA’s assertion is patently and demonstrably untrue, as tens of thousands of people across the country can attest. These patients come to rely on CBD supplements to control their pain, and they can testify to its safety and effectiveness.
(For background on the issue of investigational new drug applications and how they can be used to eliminate the supplement form of natural products, see our coverage here.)
Meanwhile, the federal government claims to be concerned about the totally out-of-control epidemic of prescribed opioid painkillers. This is just too hypocritical for words.
Action Alert! Write to the DEA—and send a copy to Congress—and tell them to reverse their rule that classifies CBD as a Schedule 1 drug. Please send your message immediately.
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The “Feds” are criminals that do little other than trample our rights….
The fact that the DEA has any say in the matter at all is outrageous. Calling CBD a drug and in the same category as heroine just shows their level of ignorance. They understand how useless they are and showing a very desperate side by grasping at straws. As medical marijuana continues to become legal in more states and CBD Oil becomes more popular, the DEA will hopefully become obsolete and eventually abolished for good.
I truly feel for the people who rely on this natural product for epilepsy, cancers, brain diseases and any other condition in which they require CBD to function. The DEA really needs to look at themselves in the mirror and ask what they’re really accomplishing here.
When legalization of marijuana reaches 38 states (or simple majority) states, federal laws pertaining to it will become moot. The Constitution delineated power to the states; when 75 percent (or simple majority) of the states legislate law which stands in direct opposition to existing federal law, the federal law is no longer relevant. This is one of the ‘checks’ written into the Constitution to prevent federal overreach beyond its designated limitations.
Sorry for the memory failure pertaining to the necessary percentage of states required.
Constitution? Who needs a constitution? We have Executive Orders!
Seriously, the federal government has trampled the Constitution and Bill of Rights into the muck and mire of their draconian agenda to control whomever they don’t kill outright!
Executive Orders are worthless. As for the Constitution, a judge recently ordered the feds to cease attempting to enforce federal law in states where it is legal. This DEA reclassification may have been made in direct response to that court order. CBD availability should remain unaffected within a legal state; their reclassification will impact its sales via interstate commerce to non-legal states – until a case is presented to the courts.
The feds are maneuvering in an attempt to retain as much power as possible. Maneuver all they want, it doesn’t detract from the powers of the states. It simply forces the issue into the courts.
You are 100% right. I think it is around 66% of the states. But at the rate it is going in no time it will also hit around 75%.
”I truly feel for the people who rely on this natural product for epilepsy, cancers, brain diseases and any other condition in which they require CBD to function.” Show me the evidence a crude homemade or bought version works for any of these?.
This is information I could provide, in all honesty. I have customers just from my store alone who rely on this product for themselves, their children, family members, etc and now have to go the medical marijuana route instead. Obviously I can’t give their information as evidence but I implore you to do a quick Google or YouTube search and it won’t be hard to find all the evidence you’ll need.
This is not the action of an ignorant federal agency with innocent intentions. It is a deliberate move to control the population and to make sure that Big Pharma gets what they paid for. For me personally, I don’t give a rat’s patootie what the gubmint dictates I can imbibe or ingest, because I shall continue to use medicinal cannabis and drink raw goat’s milk and I shall continue to refuse vaccinations and pharmaceuticals. But this despotic ruling will impact a huge segment of the population who don’t have access to CBD outside a clinic or doctor’s prescription.
I know of a teenager locally who has a rare and aggressive form of cancer and who started taking non-psychoactive cannabis. In just two months of use her tumor has shrunken considerably. What are her parents going to have to do now? Score drugs on the street?!
I tried many times to send this on but I kept getting a message that the “code” was wrong. It was right! So that is one less voice heard.
Bev, I assume you mean the code you need to enter to email your friends. You can always send the link from the email app you use on your computer, which is what I do rather than type or copy & paste multiple addresses.
The message to the DEA and your Congress critters doesn’t need a code, at least it didn’t for me. It was successfully sent twice, once in my name and once in my husband’s.
The war on drugs must be prolonged by any means necessary. If the 700+ billion dollars from the drug industry; the highest grossing industry by the way globally, were to cease then the financial and economic bubbles it floats would collapse overnight. How else are “democratically” elected governments to function? How else would the financial system which btw was built on drug money beginning with the British Raj function?
This is just another way for the federal criminals to prolong the drug war and keep Big Pharma and Big Medicine happy. It’s the same for hemp. You could smoke hemp all day long and all you would get would be a sore throat. There’s no THC in it or CBD.
Is CBS the same as CBD? The petition makes it seem so.
Anybody can file a patent for anything, that doesn’t mean it works. Clinical trials are used for a reason – to see if anything actually works.
GW Pharma isn’t hardly ‘Big Pharma’ when it had revenues last year of just £10.3 million, whereas Pfizer’s revenue for 2015 was almost $50 billion.