Despite the fact it has received little media attention, a recent decision from Sacramento bureaucrats has potentially far-reaching implications for the cannabis industry \u2014 and for patients who have come to rely on CBD to treat a wide range of ailments.<\/p>\n
On July 6, the\u00a0California Department of Public Health<\/a>\u00a0issued a\u00a0memo<\/a>\u00a0making it clear that CBD oil derived from hemp was banned in the state. The memo asserts that CBD oil derived from hemp is not under the purview of the state\u2019s cannabis regulations.<\/p>\n According to the memo, the public health department\u2019s Food and Drug Branch (FDB<\/a>) \u201chas received numerous inquiries from food processors and retailers who are interested in using industrial hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) oil or CBD products in food since the legalization of medicinal and adult-use marijuana (cannabis) in California.\u201d<\/p>\n The memo makes clear that the public health department\u2019s Manufactured Cannabis Safety Branch (MCSB<\/a>) \u201cregulates medicinal and adult-use manufactured cannabis products,\u201d while \u201cfood products derived from industrial hemp are not covered by MCSB regulations. Instead, these products fall under the jurisdiction of CDPH-FDB.\u201d<\/p>\n Interestingly, the memo argues that while California is willing to challenge the federal government\u2019s authority when it comes to legalizing cannabis, it\u2019s not willing to challenge the federal government when it comes to hemp. The memo states: \u201cAlthough California currently allows the manufacturing and sales of cannabis products (including edibles), the use of industrial hemp as the source of CBD to be added to food products is prohibited. Until the FDA rules that industrial hemp-derived CBD oil and CBD products can be used as a food or California makes a determination that they are safe to use for human and animal consumption, CBD products are not an approved food, food ingredient, food additive, or dietary supplement.\u201d<\/p>\n This memo will most likely add to the confusion about the legal status of CBD, and the difference between what the memo terms \u201chemp\u201d and \u201ccannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Further explanation is in order. The difference between psychoactive cannabis (\u201cmarijuana,\u201d by the increasingly disfavored traditional term) and hemp is a question of THC content \u2014 and legal classification. The federal government defines hemp as cannabis with 0.3 percent THC or less in terms of dry weight. The 2014 federal Farm Bill legalized state pilot programs for hemp, and 40 of the 50 states now have defined industrial hemp as distinct from cannabis and removed barriers to its production \u2014\u00a0including California<\/a>. However, California\u2019s hemp pilot program is overseen by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA<\/a>) \u2014 not either the CDPH or\u00a0Bureau of Cannabis Control<\/a>.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals\u00a0upheld the DEA\u2019s classification of CBD<\/a>\u00a0as a controlled substance, regardless of whether it is derived from hemp or psychoactive cannabis.<\/p>\n The CDPH memo adds to the confusion by drawing a distinction between \u201chemp\u201d and \u201ccannabis\u201d \u2014 even though hemp is a form of cannabis. If it weren\u2019t, you wouldn\u2019t be able to derive CBD from it. Avoiding this confusion is part of the\u00a0case for not purging the word \u201cmarijuana\u201d<\/a>\u00a0from the English language, despite the stigma increasingly associated with the word.<\/p>\n Now, while CBD derived from hemp or psychoactive cannabis (\u201cmarijuana\u201d) is chemically identical, there may be reasons other than legal concerns to make the distinction. If the hemp in question is low in CBD as well as THC, it may take exponentially more hemp than marijuana to produce the same amount of CBD. So this raises concerns about concentrates of pesticides and other contaminants getting into CBD oil made from hemp \u2014 especially hemp that has traditionally been grown for industrial purposes, and under standards developed with that in mind. In the case of\u00a0places like China<\/a>, even those standards may be too lax or not enforced at all.<\/p>\n In any case, California\u2019s decision to ban CBD oil from hemp seems like it may be informed more by legalistic hair-splitting. And to illustrate how finely that hair is split, recall that CBD is a controlled substance under federal law, regardless of what it is derived from. Yet federal policy is also contradictory. The\u00a0FDA\u2019s recent approval of the CBD medicine Epidiolex<\/a>\u00a0comes despite the fact that the DEA considers CBD a Schedule I substance, with no medical applications. A DEA rescheduling or de-scheduling of CBD would go a long way toward resolving these questions \u2014 and is coming in the next three months.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0do you think hemp-derived CBD oil should be banned?<\/p>\n The post California Bans Hemp-Derived CBD Oil<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Despite the fact it has received little media attention, a recent decision from Sacramento bureaucrats has potentially far-reaching implications for the cannabis industry \u2014 and for patients who have come to rely on CBD to treat a wide range of ailments. On July 6, the\u00a0California Department of Public Health\u00a0issued a\u00a0memo\u00a0makingContinue 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":[4671,4064,148,4966,713,50,1302,1594,4967,848,3156,4154,4968,321,90,2210,420],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27871"}],"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=27871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27872,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27871\/revisions\/27872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: California Bans Hemp-Derived CBD Oil<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"