The FDA is an organization that has been set up over time to ensure the safety of our citizens from the abuse of contaminated, dangerous, toxic, or unsafe medical products. It was originally set up in 1906 under the Pure Food and Drugs act, it has over time increased its control and restrictions in response to disasters that have cost lives and done much damage to our populace. Which is why it is rightly concerned with any and all medical claims. Medical Claims can only be made about any product after a careful review by the FDA per guidelines that they have set up to scientifically prove that a product is both safe and effective in the targeted use. And the claims can only be those agreed to by the FDA and only for the disease or condition actually tested. Which is why a cancer drug may prove effective for one type of cancer, but no claim may be made for another type, even if it seems logical or the cancer is closely related, until that specific cancer is tested and cleared by the FDA.

For that reason, CBD is only just now being approved for a very few conditions like some forms of epilepsy that have actually completed and passed their tests. This is a system that has worked well and is why we have not and will not make medical claims.

However, that does not mean that we are blind to reality. Cannabis extracts were once approved by the FDA. Prior to 1937, when Cannabis was outlawed, over the objections of even the President of the American Medical Association at the time, many pharmaceutical businesses, some still around today either still as stand-alone pharmas or as divisions of larger companies, were actively selling cannabis extracts for the same conditions they are sought today. They could not be grandfathered in as the FDA allowed for many drugs sold prior to the 1970’s because they had to be in continuous sale to qualify and, of course, cannabis was outlawed.

And although today’s products are not the same crude extracts of those times, modern extraction and purification systems today provide vastly superior products and we know so much more about how and why they work. Despite the FDA’s prohibition of claims without their approval and the lack of claims that can be made in marketing today’s products, it is widely recognized that CBD does work and has an exceptional degree of safety. But that doesn’t mean that we still shouldn’t be mindful or careful.

Over time, more and more cannabinoid drugs will be approved and will be able to make specific claims. But it will be a slow process as companies try to figure out which diseases to test and how to make a profit on what is basically a commodity after going through the hundreds of millions it will take winding their way through the FDA approval process.

Until then, we will continue to not make claims and like peppermint will soothe some stomach aches, simply suggest the only way to find out is to try it. We know it is safe, despite the FDA claims of that not being proven yet. All we can say is that in over 7,000 years of known use, and perhaps as much as 26,000 years, there have been no documented fatalities caused by cannabis.