Cannabis Insider: Expert Predicts FDA Will 'Legitimize' CBD By End Of Next Year

Sheri Orlowitz, founder and managing director of the Council for Federal Cannabis Regulation (CFCR), a non-profit based in Washington, DC., told Cannabis Insider’s Elliot Lane that she predicts by the end of 2023, CBD will likely be moved from its onerous Schedule I status.

And Orlowitz is speaking with some authority, as herself by the way and not for the CFRC. As it turns out, she just happened to have met with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before coming on to Tuesday’s Cannabis Insider, about which Lane was clearly delighted.

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Orlowitz reported that the FDA is very much engaged in the movement the cannabis industry is currently undergoing. “I predict that CBD will be legitimized next year,” Orlowitz said.

What does this mean? 

Orlowitz said she doesn’t see the FDA continuing the distinction between more and less than 0.3% THC, notwithstanding the agency's various rules, regs and limits on allowable percentages.

“CBD is after all a molecule, a simple molecule and whether it is in a high THC or low THC product, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same molecule," she said. "And what I mean by legitimizing is coming to the point of giving guidance as to how CBD can be in products as well as dose levels.”

Lane asked whether the conversation with the FDA involved discussion about rescheduling cannabis and the agency’s participation in that as well as its role in the cannabis industry going forward.

“The FDA as always been the gatekeeper. Until they say CBD is safe, it cannot be put into products while it is still federally illegal. It cannot cross state lines nor be purchased on the internet,” Orlowitz said, clearly aware that both of those situations already exist, albeit in violation of federal law. 

On a fairly regular basis, the FDA warns CBD companies against selling unauthorized CBD products. 

This past September, a group of bipartisan house members sent a letter to the FDA commissioner to complain about the agency's “completely insufficient response” to a draft bill, which called for hemp-derived CBD to be permitted and regulated as a food additive and to address product safety. 

Is the FDA listening? It seems so, though now the agency has to make a move.

“I think it’s time for regulations to catch up with the marketplace,” Orlowitz said and then added, with a note of optimism. “I think the proliferation of CBD is going to be addressed by the FDA.”

Listen to the entire interview with Sheri Orlowitz on Cannabis Insider.