Danielle Rosellison
Co-owner
Trail Blazin’ Productions
Bellingham, WA
Can we please talk about CBD for a minute?!?! With CBD, there is blatant disregard right now for rules, laws and the common good.
First, let’s start with House Bill 2334, which passed in the Washington State Legislature last year and requires imported CBD to be tested. Cannabis farmers in Washington are struggling due to overburdensome regulations and a disproportionate number of farms compared to retailers. Yet, the state is going to de facto allow out-of-state (or country) CBD to be imported? How does that help Washington residents and businesses? While I think it’s great that testing is being required, how will state officials know if a producer has used imported CBD in its products? They won’t. It’s a bunch of laws and rules that cannot be enforced, all at the detriment of local cultivators.
Second, is unregulated CBD even legal? The Controlled Substances Act defines “marihuana” as “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.” (Emphasis added.)
All my lawyer friends will tell you this is a super murky, convoluted gray area. My personal, non-lawyer interpretation is that CBD is only legal if it comes from the stalks or seeds. Any person who does one iota of research knows that getting CBD oil or isolate from the “stalks” or “seeds” is not financially viable. And even if you could, you definitely couldn’t cross state lines with it.
And finally, a CBD product was not only recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but also moved to Schedule V in the Controlled Substances Act. While stemming from hemp, this isolate is combined with other synthetic ingredients. A paper that is in the process of being peer reviewed determined that there are “key pharmacological differences between side effects of refined, pharmaceutical CBD formulations and whole plant extracts.” Well, DUH! Anyone who has been involved in the cannabis industry for any significant amount of time knows that isolate and whole plant are not the same. So, we’ve got major pharmaceutical companies out there looking to synthesize and capitalize on cannabis by pushing a sub-par, less effective product? Let me tear my hair out now! It’s not that I’m surprised — and I’m grateful that scientists and doctors are starting to research cannabis more — but how can cottage industry businesses compete with pharmaceutical companies?
At the end of the day, I know that Trail Blazin’ is providing the right products by focusing on whole plant medicine. While we aim for consistency, we don’t sacrifice Mother Nature’s creation for synthesized, isolated compounds. Our consumers deserve everything this amazing plant has to offer.
As AC Braddock, the CEO of Eden Labs, chair of the National Cannabis Industry Association, vice president of The Cannabis Alliance and just a rockstar of a human being, so eloquently put it: “Whole plant medicine IS modern medicine.” I hope more companies will follow in our footsteps and take these words to heart.