FDA Considers Regulating CBD In Foods & Supplements, Plans To Study Pregnancy And Daily Use

After years of struggling with regulations on marijuana-based products, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is signaling that it has found a way to approach the issue.

The research on whether legal cannabis is safe in food or supplements is already underway, reported the Wall Street Journal, citing the agency officials.

The agency plans to issue recommendations on how to regulate cannabis-derived products in the next few months.

"Given what we know about the safety of CBD so far, it raises concerns for FDA about whether these existing regulatory pathways for food and dietary supplements are appropriate for this substance," said FDA principal deputy commissioner Janet Woodcock, who was behind the agency's efforts to look into cannabis regulation.

The FDA also wants to look into whether CBD can be safely consumed on a daily basis or during pregnancy, the head of the FDA's cannabis strategy office Patrick Cournoyer told the WSJ. 

Hemp and its derivatives were declared federally legal under the 2018 Farm Bill. So far, clear rules and regulations with regard to food and beverages infused with hemp-derived CBD were not issued.

A group of bipartisan House lawmakers addressed the issue last year by presenting the "CBD Product Safety and Standardization Act." The measure from Kathleen Rice (D-NY), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Angie Craig (D-MN) and Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) sought to resolve the ongoing regulatory issue hemp stakeholders have been asking the FDA to clear up.

In September, the lawmakers sent a letter to the FDA commissioner to complain about the agency's "completely insufficient response" to their bill.

To that end, the agency recently appointed Norman Birenbaum as its senior public health advisor on cannabis research and regulatory actions. This was the first time the FDA had hired a cannabis research and regulation advisor.

Hemp Regulatory Issues

In the meantime, as Congress is expected to pass the next iteration of the Farm Bill in 2023, a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) highlighted that lawmakers are expected to weigh in on policy changes around hemp, more precisely, THC limits and laboratory testing, reported Marijuana Moment.

The report emphasized the issue of eradication of large quantities of hemp due to exceeding more than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight.

CRS also said that having various hemp industry groups pushing for different priorities often complicates hemp policymaking. However, they all sought to relax rules and regulatory frameworks issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The agency said that there's a "possible shared policy priority among these interest groups is to relax some of USDA's regulatory requirements, which some grower groups and state regulators contend are overly restrictive and impractical."

Photo: Courtesy of CBD Infos on Unsplash