The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco last week turned down a bid by producers of CBD extracts to prevent the Drug Enforcement Administration from classifying their preparations as illegal drugs.<\/p>\n
In the litigation, the\u00a0Hemp Industries Association<\/a>\u00a0challenged a DEA<\/a> rule issued in December 2016 that established a \u201ccode\u201d for cannabidiol, or CBD, the non-psychoactive cannabinoid highly valued for its medicinal properties. The plaintiffs contended that the DEA overstepped its authority because CBD is not listed in the Controlled Substances Act, the 1970 law establishing \u201cschedules\u201d for federally regulated or prohibited drugs.<\/p>\n Hoban Law Group<\/a>, the Denver-based firm that argued the case<\/a>, said the rule could be misinterpreted by other federal and local agencies, lead to unlawful product seizures and have a chilling effect on a burgeoning multibillion-dollar industry.<\/p>\n They secondarily argued that production of the extracts are protected both under state laws and under provisions of the 2014 federal Farm Bill intended to stimulate the hemp industry. But, as the Denver Post\u00a0reports<\/a>, the court rejected both these arguments in its April 30 ruling.<\/p>\n The 9th Circuit judges said the litigants had their chance to comment during the DEA\u2019s rule-making process last year, but failed to do so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This may not be as bad as it superficially sounds. Contrary to sensationalistic reports<\/a>\u00a0at the time, the rule issued by the DEA in 2016 did not \u201creclassify\u201d CBD extract as a Schedule 1 drug. The rule is a \u201cclarification<\/a>\u201d that CBD and other extracts are covered by the general Schedule 1 classification for cannabis. It actually changed nothing. In fact, the DEA said the creation of a code for extracts that contain no THC (the principal psychoactive cannabinoid) was actually intended to help facilitate controlled studies of their potential medical applications.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom a practical standpoint, we are giving priority, actually, to those researchers who are conducting research with marijuana extracts, [which] the internal code will allow us to track and prioritize,\u201d DEA spokesperson Russ Baer told U.S. News & World Report<\/a> after the rule was issued in December 2016.<\/p>\n And while the 9th Circuit judges found that the DEA\u2019s rule did not violate the 2014 Farm Bill (officially the Agricultural Act), they did acknowledge the legal right to grow industrial hemp under that law \u2014 defined as cannabis sativa L. varieties with a less than 0.3 percent concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. \u201cThe Agricultural Act contemplates potential conflict between the Controlled Substances Act and pre-empts it,\u201d the judges wrote.<\/p>\n Hoban Law attorney Garrett O. Graff pointed to this as a \u201csilver lining\u201d in the ruling, according to the Denver Post. \u201cThe sky is not falling, based upon this decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n So a federal crackdown on CBD does not appear imminent.<\/p>\n Of course, production of CBD extracts from industrial hemp rather than CBD-rich strains of herbaceous marijuana is a matter that the industry, patients and advocates continue to discuss. Since it takes far more industrial hemp than CBD-rich marijuana to produce the same amount of CBD extract, this raises concerns about concentrations of pesticides and other contaminants. (Of course, marijuana is also frequently grown with dangerous pesticides<\/a>, which pass through to the consumer when the marijuana extracted into oil.)<\/p>\n The threat of state-level crackdowns on CBD products does remain a possibility, meanwhile.\u00a0In March, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced a draft plan<\/a>\u00a0to pull CBD products from the shelves \u2014 even if they contain no THC. Public comment on the issue has closed, and a final decision is to expected imminently from the agency\u2019s commissioner, Dr. John Hellerstedt.<\/p>\n Attorney Robert Hoban of Denver\u2019s Hoban Law Group has sent a letter to the Texas health department warning that enacting the proposal would do \u201cdevastating and irreparable\u201d damage to the emerging hemp industry, according to<\/a> the Denver Post. The proposed rule is also protested by the Texas Cannabis Industry Association, which notes that health department was silent when the state law governing CBD products was drafted.<\/p>\n Federally, CBD remains in something of a gray area \u2014 technically in the same category as THC, but treated differently in practice. The impending Texas decision will determine how much breathing room CBD products will have in one of the union\u2019s more conservative states.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you know the difference between CBD and THC?<\/p>\n The post Appeals Court Upholds CBD\u2019s Status as Controlled Substance<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco last week turned down a bid by producers of CBD extracts to prevent the Drug Enforcement Administration from classifying their preparations as illegal drugs. In the litigation, the\u00a0Hemp Industries Association\u00a0challenged a DEA rule issued in December 2016 that established aContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,136,4153,848,4154,296,4155,90,151,726],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25971,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25970\/revisions\/25971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Appeals Court Upholds CBD\u2019s Status as Controlled Substance<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"