Congress Presses FDA for Response As CBD Goes Unregulated

Less than a month after the cosponsors of the CBD Product Safety and Standardization Act slammed the FDA for their lackluster response to the bill (and four years after the 2018 Farm Bill legalized industrial hemp), two more (Republican) congressmen are probing the FDA for a sufficient response with little patience left for discretion.

As Marijuana Moment reports, House Representatives Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Brett Guthrie (R-KY) sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf this Monday (Sep 19th) emphasizing the agency’s procrastination since the Farm Bill, leaving the CBD marketplace a fractured and unpredictable landscape for brands and consumers alike.

Specifically, Representatives Griffith and Guthrie ask the FDA in their letter to provide answers to the following issues by October 17th, among others:

• Describe what your agency has done since 2018 to gather more research data for CBD rulemaking
• Provide the “specific scientific questions that FDA has posed to NIH, CDC, or to other federal agencies” needed to establish a regulatory pathway for CBD
• Provide any data you have from a risk analysis comparing the dangers of a regulated versus an unregulated CBD marketplace
• Explain why the “Cannabidiol Enforcement Policy” document completed in July of 2020 was never released by the FDA

Since 2018, the FDA has made multiple calls for research into CBD’s safety (pregnant women included), efficacy, and effective dosage parameters, but congressional supporters of CBD are no longer buying the oft-repeated party line, “we need more research.”

Representatives Griffith and Guthrie echo the concerns of consumer safety advocates across the country when expressing the urgency of FDA regulation of CBD to commissioner Califf.

“The United States currently has a robust but largely unregulated CBD market, which leads to an unsafe marketplace for consumers,” stated the letter.

Indeed, bad actors have had the freedom to peddle products containing synthetically derived isomers of cannabinoids as a way of obtaining a “legal high” where delta-9-THC is prohibited, aided by an almost complete lack of FDA regulation.

This is just one of several issues plaguing the CBD industry, as even more trustworthy brands who have their products tested by third-party labs still have no official dosage recommendation to work with, and are forced to market their products generically in fear of making unlawful healthcare claims.

As consumer-first insiders and close watchers of the CBD industry, we will continue to update you as Congress and CBD industry members apply more pressure to the FDA.