Over the past year, cannabis advocates around the world have been waiting for the UN World Health Organization to issue its finding on whether the status of cannabis and cannabinoids under the relevant international treaties should be changed.<\/p>\n
The \u201ccritical review\u201d from the WHO\u2019s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence,\u00a0promised last year<\/a>, is now in. Although the full report has not yet been formally published, an \u201cextract\u201d of the section concerning cannabis has been\u00a0released<\/a>. While it is hardly the coup advocates had been hoping for, it still represents some progress \u2014 especially where CBD is concerned.<\/p>\n The extract of the report begins with the recommendation that cannabis and cannabis extracts \u201cbe deleted from Schedule IV of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n As the text explains, cannabis and cannabis resin are included in both Schedule I and Schedule IV of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Substances that are included in both these schedules are considered \u201cparticularly liable to abuse and to produce ill-effects and have little or no therapeutic use.\u201d Other substances listed under both these schedules are fentanyl analogues and heroin \u2014 rightly \u201cconsidered especially dangerous,\u201d all the more so in light of the current opioid crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Refreshingly, the report found: \u201cThe evidence presented to the Committee did not indicate that cannabis plant and cannabis resin were particularly liable to produce ill-effects similar to the effects of the other substances in Schedule IV\u2026 In addition, preparations of cannabis have shown therapeutic potential for treatment of pain and other medical conditions such as epilepsy and spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the report did not call for removing cannabis from Schedule I \u2014 which is the more operative question where U.S. law is concerned.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cIn line with the above, cannabis and cannabis resin should be scheduled at a level of control that will prevent harm caused by cannabis use and at the same time will not act as a barrier to access and to research and development of cannabis-related preparation for medical use,\u201d the report reads.<\/p>\n The report then went on to recommend that dronabinol (the THC analogue being marketed as Marinol)\u00a0and its stereoisomers (that is, the natural endocannabinoids it mimics, basically forms of delta-9- tetrahydrocannabinol or THC) be removed from Schedule II of the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and placed in Schedule I of the Single Convention.<\/p>\n This also has little effect on U.S. law, which already classifies THC as a Schedule I substance \u2014 despite the fact that its synthetic analogue dronabinol is\u00a0placed<\/a>\u00a0by the Drug Enforcement Administration under the less restrictive Schedule III.<\/p>\n The WHO\u2019s recommendations are more encouraging where they address extracts and cannabidiol (CBD), the non-psychoactive cannabinoid now the subject of intense interest by the medical community.<\/p>\n The report calls for \u201cdeleting Extracts and Tinctures of Cannabis from Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.\u201d Mind you, this primarily concerns extracts and tinctures containing only CBD, as THC (as we have seen) is to remain prohibited under the recommendations.<\/p>\n Which brings us to perhaps the most meaningful recommendation from the report: \u201cThe Committee recommended that a footnote be added to Schedule I of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to read: \u2018Preparations containing predominantly cannabidiol and not more than 0.2 percent of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol are not under international control.’\u201d<\/p>\n If the recommendations are followed and relevant treaties reworked by member nations, CBD will be descheduled and effectively become an over-the-counter drug worldwide.<\/p>\n These recommendations follow related changes by national governments over the past year. Most significantly, the United Kingdom in October\u00a0removed cannabis<\/a>\u00a0from Schedule I and placed it in Schedule II where its own internal law is concerned.<\/p>\n In September 2018, the U.S. DEA\u00a0removed<\/a>\u00a0the CBD-derived drug Epidiolex (although not CBD itself) from Schedule I and placed it in the far less restrictive Schedule V.\u00a0Finally, the federal Farm Bill signed by President Trump in December\u00a0descheduled<\/a>\u00a0hemp-derived CBD (although, confusingly, not chemically identical CBD derived from strains with more than 0.3 percent THC).<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b>\u00a0do you think cannabis should be a Schedule I drug?<\/p>\n The post World Health Organization Calls for Rescheduling Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Over the past year, cannabis advocates around the world have been waiting for the UN World Health Organization to issue its finding on whether the status of cannabis and cannabinoids under the relevant international treaties should be changed. The \u201ccritical review\u201d from the WHO\u2019s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence,\u00a0promised lastContinue 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":[713,50,2917,136,7469,5561,81,978,7470,6020,420,1221,1173],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32645"}],"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=32645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32646,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32645\/revisions\/32646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}First the Bad News: Cannabis Stays in Schedule I<\/h4>\n
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Better News for CBD<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: World Health Organization Calls for Rescheduling Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"