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This is an extremely misleading headline for people to read and the mods should change it. Hemp has been legal for a long time and the DEA has stated that CBD p

This is an extremely misleading headline for people to read and the mods should change it. Hemp has been legal for a long time and the DEA has stated that CBD products produced solely from hemp plants are federally legal. It is still illegal to produce or own cannabidiol derived from Marijuana. Emphatically, this statement from the FDA does not mean that cannabidiol as a chemical is legal. (2016, usdoj.gov) https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/schedules/marijuana/m_extract_7350.html https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/schedules/marijuana/m_ext... Nothing has changed here except that the FDA is claiming authority to regulate the small subset of CBD products that are legally produced from hemp. The above DOJ article goes somewhat into the science of how these products, if they exist and are produced legally, contain such trace amounts of CBD that they're surely ineffective. Point being: either it's produced from real flowers and it's still illegal, or it's produced from hemp and present in such small amounts that it's of absolutely no benefit. The FDA is merely saying that they want to regulate the latter case.

nickysielicki 8y ago
(My opinion) I'm generally against any form of regulation, but as long as we live in a society where drug laws already don't make sense, regulating the headshop CBD industry is going to do good things. The industry around cannabidiol is disgusting, particularly when it comes to products sold outside of states with medical or recreational marijuana. Outside of your average stoner looking for holistic medicine, a great deal of people interested in CBD are cancer patients or family of cancer patients. At best, these companies are making money selling snake oil to dying people. At worst, they're introducing dangerous toxic chemicals to immunocompromised individuals and actively harming them. I can't find the article but there was news a few years ago about a head chemist stepping down from one of the largest (at the time) legal producers of CBD. She wrote an exposé about how their leadership was pushing for higher purity at the cost of safety, and how it forced her to resign.
- howhireable3141 8y ago
  Agreed but the government is to blame for a lot of this. People are super thirsty for CBD, it is very effective for many people. Especially elderly people that have been anti-pot most of their lives. These people don't have any good ways of making good buying decisions, let a lone having a regulatory body to rely on to test this stuff. So they just choose stuff with good marketing and high concentrations. Not to say your article isn't making a good point -- just that these nasty companies being successful is due to a vacuum created by decades of complete head-up-our-own-ass marijuana policy.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    >People are super thirsty for CBD, Because you can't open social media without seeing music artists, actors, comedians, strength athletes, social-media-only-famous people shilling for one company or another with sponsored posts. >it is very effective for many people. Placebo is a hell of a drug. There is no credible, replicable, evidence that CBD does anything for anyone, and it's done nothing for many people duped into buying it, it's likely acting as a placebo. It's all n=1 posts, "my friend's uncle has cancer and took some and man it changed his life", SEO advertorial blogs and 'press releases', forum posts etc.
    - wpietri 8y ago
      To what extent has it been properly studied? If you're asserting it's a placebo effect, shouldn't that mean you have significant proof no other effect is involved? I haven't tried it, but I have friends with chronic pain that prefer it to both opiates and OTC painkillers and have for years. That certainly could be placebo, but having seen them cycle through a variety of approaches and stop on CBD, I'd be surprised there's absolutely no effect.
      - pr0zac 8y ago
        > If you're asserting it's a placebo effect, shouldn't that mean you have significant proof no other effect is involved? Thats not how scientific research into drugs works. The null hypothesis that you hold by default is that the substance being studied has no effect. The purpose of research is to demonstrate that an effect exists and until that has been shown the null hypothesis is held to be true. https://info.umkc.edu/drbanderson/null-hypothesis-testing/ https://info.umkc.edu/drbanderson/null-hypothesis-testing/
        wpietri 8y ago
        Perhaps you could try assuming that I knew about the null hypothesis already and still wrote what I wrote.
    - codeulike 8y ago
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >regulating the headshop CBD industry is going to do good things. Meh, this just gives people something to manipulate to try and give their snake oil validity "hey the FDA says it's ok!". There's no credible, replicable, evidence CBD does anything beneficial besides acting as a placebo. Just lots of ad copy, 'press releases', SEO link farms, n=1 claims and content claiming the benefits posted directly, or through a layer or two of obfuscation, by manufacturers.
  - burgerboy 8y ago
    Got any data to back that up
  - toaster42 8y ago
    You are being amazingly toxic without contributing meaningfully to this conversation, ryanmercer.
- dd36 8y ago
  Nearly all regulation is to protect the public from something bad that someone did in the past. Why would you be against that?
  - donkeyd 8y ago
    Because seatbelts, airbags, building codes and things like that are just a huge burden on society.
    - _Schizotypy 8y ago
      /s Here you dropped this
  - pc86 8y ago
    There is the ideological argument that a lot of regulation comes out of Congress ceding its lawmaking authority to un-elected and largely unaccountable Executive branch officials. So it's not necessarily a desire that the regulation not exist, but that it come out of Congress so there are faces and names attached to it. And while some regulation is certainly a response to bad actors to say that "nearly all" of the tens of thousands of new pages of regulations written every year are that is going to need some sort of citation.
    - Retra 8y ago
      Being "generally against regulation" doesn't imply any specific mitigating rational as you would suggest. Being against poor, mishandled, or unnecessary regulation... yes. But if that was stated, there'd be nothing to argue with.
      - pc86 8y ago
        Ideologically you can be "generally against regulation" because you think it's unnecessary, or because you think more optimal positions will come out of the free market, or because you think corporations having free reign to do whatever they want is not an inherently negative thing. Some of those seems more reasonable than others, of course.
- jklinger410 8y ago
  >At best, these companies are making money selling snake oil to dying people. At worst, they're introducing dangerous toxic chemicals to immunocompromised individuals and actively harming them. This statement would make a lot more sense if our government did not currently have ignorant and draconian regulations and restrictions around this substance. The snake oil salesman knows it does nothing and sells it anyway. Snake oil is not banned from being studied. CBD absolutely helps with seizures and anxiety. I don't need some retroactive scientific study to show this because the evidence is already there, vouched for by those who use it. There is no placebo effect for seizures. You have an opinion that someone with a PHD needs to sign off on everything you put in your body, that's fine. But that does not equate things that are untested to fucking snake oil, my guy.
  - nyolfen 8y ago
    > CBD absolutely helps with seizures and anxiety. I don't need some retroactive scientific study to show this because the evidence is already there, vouched for by those who use it. There is no placebo effect for seizures. there is a huge issue with quality control for cbd -- it varies wildly between products and is totally impossible to control for. i'm sure it can be medically useful but you must be able to buy a legitimate product first.
    - jklinger410 8y ago
      Ok, cool. I totally agree. I'm just not sure how "it's good that CBD is regulated" is similar to "every company that makes CBD is selling snake oil or putting people's lives in danger."
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    See, this is where "snake oil" claims give us problems - in trying to knock down criticisms of the industry, you're making a false claim. > There is no placebo effect for seizures. "A positive response to placebo administration, manifesting as a decrease in seizure frequency, can be observed in epileptic dogs." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19912522 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19912522 "For unknown reasons, placebos reduce seizures in clinical trials in many patients... Strangely, a meta-analysis found placebo effects in epilepsy trials increased steadily from 1989 to 2010, with decreasing apparent drug treatment effects." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4546516/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4546516/
howhireable3141 8y ago
Hemp (according to the FDA[1]) is just cannabis with very low THC. It can look nearly identical to "marijuana". Hemp is to marijuana as Dachsunds are to Golden Retrievers. Super "dank" CDB plants already exist (see "Ringo's Gift"). Its not a stretch to get them under .3% thc. 1. https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm421168.htm https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm421168.h...
- nickysielicki 8y ago
  Scientifically, sure. But legally these are all totally different. "Marihuana" is different from "Cannabis" in the eye of the DEA.
  - howhireable3141 8y ago
    The legal definition (I believe) is split by THC concentrations.
    - nickysielicki 8y ago
      It's dependent on what part of the plant it's derived from --- whether it's fiberous or not. Notably, flowers are marijuana. > The term 'marihuana' means all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., whether growing or not; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from any part of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such plant, its seeds or resin. Such term does not include the mature stalks of such plant, fiber produced from such stalks, oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant, any other compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such mature stalks (except the resin extracted therefrom), fiber, oil, or cake, or the sterilized seed of such plant which is incapable of germination.
phil248 8y ago
Can you explain exactly how "Hemp has been legal for a long time"? Individuals and businesses were able to grow and sell hemp in this United States? When did this begin and what federal action made it legal?
- populum 8y ago
  Hemp started to get federally deregulated in 2014 with the passage of the 2014 Farm Bill - this bill properly defined hemp as "cannabis sativa with <0.3% THC" and allowed states to start pilot programs to farm hemp. The Appropriations Act also prohibited law enforcement (including DEA) from interfering with hemp. However, there was still a lot of confusion as DEA published statements that sent mixed signals to the industry and customers. For instance, the 2014 farm bill legalized hemp & farming, but what about its derivatives (i.e. seeds, extracts)? The 2018 Farm Bill clarifies all this by including hemp and all its derivatives.
- moate 8y ago
  No he can't because it's factually inaccurate. Hemp growing had been considered production a Schedule 1 controlled substance for decades. CBD was also in a weird gray area of semi-legality. Despite lax enforcement of the laws, it was could have technically been brought up under the Controlled Substances Act but it didn't seem like anyone had any interest in doing that. In addition, while people may have been running grey area hemp production, they would have had to be entirely uninsured and cash funded as most banks and insurance companies wouldn't touch someone violating federal law with a ten foot pole. This changes that as well, allowing for greater expansion.
nyxtom 8y ago
That’s all this “farm bill” did for hemp? What a shame
gdubs 8y ago
Industrial Hemp is just cannabis with a THC content under 0.3%. This has been illegal to produce, but people have been doing it in states like CO, OR, etc, that have state-legal cannabis. Until now, CBD has been in a gray area because selling hemp has generally been accepted because of the <0.3% THC. But now that the 2018 Farm Bill has legalized growing hemp, federally, the FDA is saying, “slow down, CBD is a drug.” How this affects the CBD industry will be the thing to watch. On the one hand it just got a lot easier to farm the plant. But it’s about to get more regulated. Which is good for consumers who might be taking products that are toxic without realizing it. But it also will probably make it harder to get legit CBD oil to consumers without jumping through a lot of expensive regulatory hoops. (Agree about the headline being very misleading – this should be changed.)
- 80386 8y ago
  I don't really know what the regulatory deal is, but on my block there's a 7-11 and a fancy organic store. The 7-11 sells CBD gummies (and kratom, and Soylent...), and the fancy organic store sells CBD coffee. Has there been a problem with CBD toxicity? Is it likely that it'll be regulated out of corner-store availability?
Splendor 8y ago
More importantly even though it is legal at the federal level now there are still states where it is illegal.
dang 8y ago
Ok, we belatedly replaced the title with representative language from the article. It would have been helpful if someone had let us know at hn@ycombinator.com that this was needed. We don't come close to seeing all the problems here, or the comments pointing them out.

nickysielicki 8y ago

(My opinion) I'm generally against any form of regulation, but as long as we live in a society where drug laws already don't make sense, regulating the headshop CBD industry is going to do good things. The industry around cannabidiol is disgusting, particularly when it comes to products sold outside of states with medical or recreational marijuana. Outside of your average stoner looking for holistic medicine, a great deal of people interested in CBD are cancer patients or family of cancer patients. At best, these companies are making money selling snake oil to dying people. At worst, they're introducing dangerous toxic chemicals to immunocompromised individuals and actively harming them. I can't find the article but there was news a few years ago about a head chemist stepping down from one of the largest (at the time) legal producers of CBD. She wrote an exposé about how their leadership was pushing for higher purity at the cost of safety, and how it forced her to resign.

howhireable3141 8y ago
Agreed but the government is to blame for a lot of this. People are super thirsty for CBD, it is very effective for many people. Especially elderly people that have been anti-pot most of their lives. These people don't have any good ways of making good buying decisions, let a lone having a regulatory body to rely on to test this stuff. So they just choose stuff with good marketing and high concentrations. Not to say your article isn't making a good point -- just that these nasty companies being successful is due to a vacuum created by decades of complete head-up-our-own-ass marijuana policy.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >People are super thirsty for CBD, Because you can't open social media without seeing music artists, actors, comedians, strength athletes, social-media-only-famous people shilling for one company or another with sponsored posts. >it is very effective for many people. Placebo is a hell of a drug. There is no credible, replicable, evidence that CBD does anything for anyone, and it's done nothing for many people duped into buying it, it's likely acting as a placebo. It's all n=1 posts, "my friend's uncle has cancer and took some and man it changed his life", SEO advertorial blogs and 'press releases', forum posts etc.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    To what extent has it been properly studied? If you're asserting it's a placebo effect, shouldn't that mean you have significant proof no other effect is involved? I haven't tried it, but I have friends with chronic pain that prefer it to both opiates and OTC painkillers and have for years. That certainly could be placebo, but having seen them cycle through a variety of approaches and stop on CBD, I'd be surprised there's absolutely no effect.
    - pr0zac 8y ago
      > If you're asserting it's a placebo effect, shouldn't that mean you have significant proof no other effect is involved? Thats not how scientific research into drugs works. The null hypothesis that you hold by default is that the substance being studied has no effect. The purpose of research is to demonstrate that an effect exists and until that has been shown the null hypothesis is held to be true. https://info.umkc.edu/drbanderson/null-hypothesis-testing/ https://info.umkc.edu/drbanderson/null-hypothesis-testing/
      - wpietri 8y ago
        Perhaps you could try assuming that I knew about the null hypothesis already and still wrote what I wrote.
  - codeulike 8y ago
ryanmercer 8y ago
>regulating the headshop CBD industry is going to do good things. Meh, this just gives people something to manipulate to try and give their snake oil validity "hey the FDA says it's ok!". There's no credible, replicable, evidence CBD does anything beneficial besides acting as a placebo. Just lots of ad copy, 'press releases', SEO link farms, n=1 claims and content claiming the benefits posted directly, or through a layer or two of obfuscation, by manufacturers.
- burgerboy 8y ago
  Got any data to back that up
- toaster42 8y ago
  You are being amazingly toxic without contributing meaningfully to this conversation, ryanmercer.
dd36 8y ago
Nearly all regulation is to protect the public from something bad that someone did in the past. Why would you be against that?
- donkeyd 8y ago
  Because seatbelts, airbags, building codes and things like that are just a huge burden on society.
  - _Schizotypy 8y ago
    /s Here you dropped this
- pc86 8y ago
  There is the ideological argument that a lot of regulation comes out of Congress ceding its lawmaking authority to un-elected and largely unaccountable Executive branch officials. So it's not necessarily a desire that the regulation not exist, but that it come out of Congress so there are faces and names attached to it. And while some regulation is certainly a response to bad actors to say that "nearly all" of the tens of thousands of new pages of regulations written every year are that is going to need some sort of citation.
  - Retra 8y ago
    Being "generally against regulation" doesn't imply any specific mitigating rational as you would suggest. Being against poor, mishandled, or unnecessary regulation... yes. But if that was stated, there'd be nothing to argue with.
    - pc86 8y ago
      Ideologically you can be "generally against regulation" because you think it's unnecessary, or because you think more optimal positions will come out of the free market, or because you think corporations having free reign to do whatever they want is not an inherently negative thing. Some of those seems more reasonable than others, of course.
jklinger410 8y ago
>At best, these companies are making money selling snake oil to dying people. At worst, they're introducing dangerous toxic chemicals to immunocompromised individuals and actively harming them. This statement would make a lot more sense if our government did not currently have ignorant and draconian regulations and restrictions around this substance. The snake oil salesman knows it does nothing and sells it anyway. Snake oil is not banned from being studied. CBD absolutely helps with seizures and anxiety. I don't need some retroactive scientific study to show this because the evidence is already there, vouched for by those who use it. There is no placebo effect for seizures. You have an opinion that someone with a PHD needs to sign off on everything you put in your body, that's fine. But that does not equate things that are untested to fucking snake oil, my guy.
- nyolfen 8y ago
  > CBD absolutely helps with seizures and anxiety. I don't need some retroactive scientific study to show this because the evidence is already there, vouched for by those who use it. There is no placebo effect for seizures. there is a huge issue with quality control for cbd -- it varies wildly between products and is totally impossible to control for. i'm sure it can be medically useful but you must be able to buy a legitimate product first.
  - jklinger410 8y ago
    Ok, cool. I totally agree. I'm just not sure how "it's good that CBD is regulated" is similar to "every company that makes CBD is selling snake oil or putting people's lives in danger."
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  See, this is where "snake oil" claims give us problems - in trying to knock down criticisms of the industry, you're making a false claim. > There is no placebo effect for seizures. "A positive response to placebo administration, manifesting as a decrease in seizure frequency, can be observed in epileptic dogs." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19912522 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19912522 "For unknown reasons, placebos reduce seizures in clinical trials in many patients... Strangely, a meta-analysis found placebo effects in epilepsy trials increased steadily from 1989 to 2010, with decreasing apparent drug treatment effects." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4546516/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4546516/

howhireable3141 8y ago

Hemp (according to the FDA[1]) is just cannabis with very low THC. It can look nearly identical to "marijuana". Hemp is to marijuana as Dachsunds are to Golden Retrievers. Super "dank" CDB plants already exist (see "Ringo's Gift"). Its not a stretch to get them under .3% thc. 1. https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm421168.htm https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm421168.h...

nickysielicki 8y ago
Scientifically, sure. But legally these are all totally different. "Marihuana" is different from "Cannabis" in the eye of the DEA.
- howhireable3141 8y ago
  The legal definition (I believe) is split by THC concentrations.
  - nickysielicki 8y ago
    It's dependent on what part of the plant it's derived from --- whether it's fiberous or not. Notably, flowers are marijuana. > The term 'marihuana' means all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., whether growing or not; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from any part of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such plant, its seeds or resin. Such term does not include the mature stalks of such plant, fiber produced from such stalks, oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant, any other compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such mature stalks (except the resin extracted therefrom), fiber, oil, or cake, or the sterilized seed of such plant which is incapable of germination.

phil248 8y ago

Can you explain exactly how "Hemp has been legal for a long time"? Individuals and businesses were able to grow and sell hemp in this United States? When did this begin and what federal action made it legal?

populum 8y ago
Hemp started to get federally deregulated in 2014 with the passage of the 2014 Farm Bill - this bill properly defined hemp as "cannabis sativa with <0.3% THC" and allowed states to start pilot programs to farm hemp. The Appropriations Act also prohibited law enforcement (including DEA) from interfering with hemp. However, there was still a lot of confusion as DEA published statements that sent mixed signals to the industry and customers. For instance, the 2014 farm bill legalized hemp & farming, but what about its derivatives (i.e. seeds, extracts)? The 2018 Farm Bill clarifies all this by including hemp and all its derivatives.
moate 8y ago
No he can't because it's factually inaccurate. Hemp growing had been considered production a Schedule 1 controlled substance for decades. CBD was also in a weird gray area of semi-legality. Despite lax enforcement of the laws, it was could have technically been brought up under the Controlled Substances Act but it didn't seem like anyone had any interest in doing that. In addition, while people may have been running grey area hemp production, they would have had to be entirely uninsured and cash funded as most banks and insurance companies wouldn't touch someone violating federal law with a ten foot pole. This changes that as well, allowing for greater expansion.

nyxtom 8y ago

That’s all this “farm bill” did for hemp? What a shame

gdubs 8y ago

Industrial Hemp is just cannabis with a THC content under 0.3%. This has been illegal to produce, but people have been doing it in states like CO, OR, etc, that have state-legal cannabis. Until now, CBD has been in a gray area because selling hemp has generally been accepted because of the <0.3% THC. But now that the 2018 Farm Bill has legalized growing hemp, federally, the FDA is saying, “slow down, CBD is a drug.” How this affects the CBD industry will be the thing to watch. On the one hand it just got a lot easier to farm the plant. But it’s about to get more regulated. Which is good for consumers who might be taking products that are toxic without realizing it. But it also will probably make it harder to get legit CBD oil to consumers without jumping through a lot of expensive regulatory hoops. (Agree about the headline being very misleading – this should be changed.)

80386 8y ago
I don't really know what the regulatory deal is, but on my block there's a 7-11 and a fancy organic store. The 7-11 sells CBD gummies (and kratom, and Soylent...), and the fancy organic store sells CBD coffee. Has there been a problem with CBD toxicity? Is it likely that it'll be regulated out of corner-store availability?

Splendor 8y ago

More importantly even though it is legal at the federal level now there are still states where it is illegal.

dang 8y ago

Ok, we belatedly replaced the title with representative language from the article. It would have been helpful if someone had let us know at hn@ycombinator.com that this was needed. We don't come close to seeing all the problems here, or the comments pointing them out.