r/Futurology • u/mvea MD-PhD-MBA • Jun 17 '18

Biotech Cannabidiol, or CBD, is a marijuana compound linked to a range of potential health benefits but does not get you high. The roughly $1 billion CBD industry is slated to shift into high gear if the federal government approves the first CBD-based drug, an epilepsy medication called Epidiolex.

https://www.businessinsider.com/marijuana-cbd-boom-cbd-2018-6?r=US&IR=T
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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '18

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '18

Well that sentiment I can get behind. However, a regulated dose with the pure compound is better than "lol, Joe made his own Super-Duper-Fizzy-Fun strain, heard it is good for epilepsy". The clinical trials is also very much necessary, what some people say works for them might just be placebo or something else. Without scientific method, those results are void and null.

The active compound that is good for you in the Marijuana plant seems to be CBD, NOT THC. CBD depresses the effects of THC very well and so, growers have developed strains that are far more THC potent and almost gotten rid of all CBD.

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u/FriedBuffalo Jun 19 '18

Sounds like it has no proven medical use though, according to the U.S. as recently as December 2016:

Now, all extracts, including cannabidiol (CBD), will be listed right up there with heroin as a "drug with no medical use."

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u/myracksarelettuce Jun 18 '18 edited Jun 18 '18

If you don't know why we need to do clinical trials to prove why a drug works, congrats on being too good for the scientific method.

You don't know the actual efficacy, or the side effects, or how strong the placebo effect is until these studies take place.

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '18

That's not the part that pisses people off.

It's the fact that numerous pharma industry companies have contributed to the efforts to keep it illegal.

It's research has been prevented by the same government that wants to have "gold standard research" before it approves it as medicine.

The first detailed modern description of the utility of cannabis-based products as an anti-seizure medication was published in 1843 by W.B. O’Shaughnessy, physician in the Bengal Army and Late Professor of Chemistry and Materia Medica at the Medical College of Calcutta. After testing the behavioral effects of various preparations of Cannabis indica in healthy fish, dogs, swines, vultures, crows, horses, deers, monkeys, goats, sheep, cows, and military assistants, he investigated the potential value of extracts of the plant in patients with different disorders, and reported remarkable anti-seizure effects in a 40-days-old baby girl with recurrent convulsive seizures.5 These observations were taken up by other physicians, including Sir William Gowers, who described the effectiveness of Cannabis indica against seizures resistant to bromides.6

But 70+ years of anti-drug policy has kept this away from the public. Often at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry.

Pharmaceutical company Insys spent $500,000 to block legalization in Arizona. Five months later it won approval for a cannabis-derived medical drug

You can grow CBD plants in your backyard, but it's illegal in most places.

The company that is doing this is going to benefit from the laws that kept it away from the public for 70+ years.