The FDA recently ruled to allow a cannabis-based CBD epilepsy treatment to make its way into conversations between doctors and patients and into pharmacies nationwide.
As we all anxiously await the DEA’s decision as to whether or not to approve the ruling, rumor has it that the agency is furiously trying to rethink the genetic code of the cannabis plant to somehow legally separate the two most abundant and beneficial cannabinoids – CBD and THC – so that one can be rescheduled for medicinal use and the other can remain an easy target for ignorant lawmakers and law enforcement.
We’ll let you guess which is which.
Just in the past week, more and more headlines have begun to arise regarding the potency of cannabis, more often than not painting it as some new and much more dangerous version of your daddy’s schwag.
In Oklahoma, for example, voters finally got a medical marijuana measure on the ballot and SQ788 was born into law this year. As the final draft rules are being inked one consideration in front of the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority is whether or not the potency of cannabis flowers and concentrates should be limited by state law.
These provisions state that cannabis flower should carry no more than 12% THC and cannabis concentrates no more than 20%.
Their basis for these ridiculously low numbers comes from local consulting partner Hillcrest HealthCare System who claims that the new state MMJ law should only allow products that “provide predictable dosing to prevent poisonings, impaired driving, and drug dependency.”
We couldn’t find any statistics regarding how many opioid-based prescriptions have been written under the umbrella of Hillcrest HealthCare but we do know that their CEO, Kevin Gross, is on the Oklahoma Board of Corrections. That’s definitely gross, Kev.
Arguing in favor of a more loose definition of “legalization” is Sunil Aggarwal, a Washington-based doc who specializes in matching patients with varying ailments with appropriate cannabis-based treatment.
Regarding the powers that be in Oklahoma, he says, “Cannabis is phytomedicine. They might not be used to thinking of plants as medicine, but most of the world has been using plants as medicine. It’s important to have different ranges (of THC) that the plants offer. Strength (of prescriptions) is in variety.”
Even after a huge win at the ballot box, the battle continues in Oklahoma.
Meanwhile in Boulder, Colorado, Dr. Rav Ivker – known mostly for a book titled Cannabis for Chronic Pain – is also ringing the alarm bells about THC and he wants to take it even further by totally banning cannabis extracts and concentrates altogether.
“I think they should be illegal. In fact, I hope they become illegal. The only thing they’re good for is getting really high. But they’re high-risk, and there’s really no benefit from them,” says Ivker.
Ivker runs a pain management clinic and readily admits that while THC does play a role in his practice, his preference is to use CBD as it is non-psychoactive.
Surely the good doctor must be aware of the amazing strides that have been made with medical marijuana over the past ten years with regards to epilepsy, cancer killing, and an ongoing list of other treatments and that it has all been done with cannabis extracts of one form or another.
The fact of the matter is that the full spectrum of the cannabis plant carries and delivers healing properties and the balance between various cannabinoid levels is what determines how effectively certain ailments can be treated.
It’s way past time that we stopped allowing the media and the prohibitionists to demonize THC due to “psychoactive” behavior.
Watch as cowardly politicians, forced by their pro-cannabis constituencies back at home, attempt to appease those calls by supporting weak and watered-down laws to allow CBD but exclude THC.
When you see it, call it out.
We have come too far to let them rewrite the rules right before they lose.
Raed more at Beard Bros Pharms.
