IS CBD A MIRACLE CURE OR A MARKETING SCAM?

• Author: Riggs, Mike
• Position: BOTH - Cannabidiol

JENNIFER ANISTON USES it for anxiety. Podcast host Joe Rogan applies it for elbow pain. You can buy dog treats infused with it, as well as facial scrubs and hand lotions, tinctures, and vaporizer cartridges. It's used as an ingredient in cocktails, beer, and gummy worms. It's sold at Amish markets and at fancy boutiques and at prepper depots. In October, it received the ultimate blessing for a trendy new cure-all: It was the subject of a multipart special on daytime basic cable hosted by Dr. Oz.

"It" is cannabidiol, or CBD, a compound contained mostly in the flowers of the female marijuana plant but also in the burlier hemp plant--both strains of Cannabis sativa. Like tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), CBD attaches to receptors throughout the body. But unlike THC, it doesn't alter perception or sharpen the appetite. Instead, people who use pure CBD report feeling calmed and relaxed. As Aniston recently told Us Weekly, "CBD helps with pain, stress, and anxiety. It has all the benefits of marijuana without the high."

But alongside all the celebrity buzz and bright marketing claims, there is another, more inspiring type of story about CBD: Children wracked by dozens of severe epileptic seizures a day who are suddenly well, their desperate parents weeping in relief. Although there is a near-complete absence of data concerning casual, low-dose use in lollipops or scented skin creams, a growing body of scientific evidence shows the efficacy of large doses of pure CBD for treating certain dire medical conditions.

The growing universe of CBD products--powerful cures and spa-day fun alike--is threatened by overzealous regulators, some of whom insist that CBD be classed among the most dangerous drugs. That means the people who stand to benefit most--the sickest and most desperate CBD users--remain at grave risk.

CBD, then, is caught between two worlds: the medical reality of its effectiveness in large doses on the one hand, and the popular image of a tasty, calming, faddish cure-all on the other.

CANNABIS FOR KINDERGARTNERS

THE STORY OF today's CBD resurgence starts in 2011, when Paige Figi of Colorado put her 5-year-old daughter, Charlotte, in hospice care. Doctors thought she had a few weeks left to live, a few months at most.

For most of Charlotte's brief life, Figi and her husband had been on a fruitless quest to alleviate the violent seizures their daughter suffered as a result of Dravet syndrome, a rare and incurable form of epilepsy whose sufferers have a life expectancy of about eight years.

By the time Charlotte turned 5, her parents had tried just about every treatment available. Yet Charlotte still needed a feeding tube to eat and was debilitated by seizures that came on at all times of day and night.

"We did vitamins, acupuncture, gluten-free, dairy-free, keto, all raw and organic," Figi says. "We tried every pharmaceutical drug on the market except ones that were dangerous to children. You're just sort of throwing darts aimlessly."

Even after all those failures, there was one more thing Charlotte's parents wanted to try. During the hundreds of hours Figi spent researching Dravet syndrome, she came across studies from Israel and Europe that showed that CBD worked as an anticonvulsant and could possibly keep Charlotte's seizures at bay.

Figi wanted to administer CBD to her daughter. She found translators so she could talk to physicians and researchers in Israel and France. From these distant mentors, she learned how to extract CBD from marijuana, how to dose it, and how to test its purity.

The only remaining obstacle was finding a doctor who would recommend giving a cannabis derivative to a kindergartner. While federal law is shifting all the time, in 2011 CBD was illegal. As a compound that could be derived from cannabis, it was classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning it had no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. It was therefore illegal to manufacture, possess, sell, purchase, or consume. Even in pioneering Colorado, then home to a very liberal medical marijuana system, giving CBD to a small child was a tough sell.

"I was terribly nervous," Figi says. "The 'red card' doctors"--physicians who specialized in approving people for the state's medical marijuana program--"were all opposed." Eventually, Figi convinced a small team of physicians across several institutions to review Charlotte's case and sign off on giving her CBD, making her the youngest medical marijuana patient in the state.

After 18 months, Figi stepped forward to announce that her daughter was free of seizures and no longer taking any medication aside from CBD. Sanjay Gupta, a physician and talking head, flew to Colorado to meet the Figis and eventually created a series of CNN specials on medical marijuana that sparked national interest in Charlotte's case.

In the years since, parents of epileptic children have moved their families to Colorado in order to gain access to reliable and legal-to-administer CBD. Following Paige Figi's advocacy, several red-state legislatures legalized CBD while leaving marijuana itself and other cannabinoids illegal.

CBD doesn't "cure" Dravet syndrome; it only treats the most dangerous symptoms. Dravet patients will still have drastically shorter lives than average, and not all of them will respond equally well to CBD, because every patient is different. But there is no longer any question among medical professionals that CBD works as an anti-epileptic drug.

'PURE CBD GUMDROPS'

DURING THE SAME period that Charlotte was undergoing treatment, CBD found its way into a variety of nonmedicinal products, from $13 bath bombs advertised as providing pain relief and "mental clarity" to essential oil combinations that retail for as much as $60 an ounce. This year, CBD made an appearance at In Goop Health, the conference hosted by actress and wellness entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow, as part of a panel devoted to the health effects of marijuana and associated products. Once you know what it is, you start to see it everywhere. It served as a punchline in a recent New Yorker "Shouts and Murmurs" column and earned a shoutout from Paul Nassif, a star of the reality TV show Botched.

"CBD was isolated in 1940, and for decades nobody cared," says Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and an early proponent of researching CBD's medical utility. "I have been doing this work since the mid-1990s, and for the first decade or so, nobody but a wonk would talk about CBD." Now, however, the number of CBD questions Armentano receives at NORML is "almost overwhelming."

Among cannabis policy analysts and the people who report on drug policy, Armentano has a reputation...