You can walk into a coffee shop, a massage spa or even a doggie daycare -- and
walk out with something infused with CBD.
This cannabis compound, which some claim can help with pain, anxiety or other ailments,
has sparked a gold... a “green” rush in the U.S.
Sales for CBD -- or cannabidiol as it’s called -- are expected to grow from $1 billion
to $20 billion within the next three years.
But if you don’t do your homework, those lotions or lattes could land you in deep trouble
-- EVEN in places where medical or recreational weed is legal --- AND EVEN THOUGH the 2018
Farm Bill removed restrictions from CBD if it’s derived from hemp plants.
I mean just look at the confusion that remains among federal agencies:
As of early July 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says states can’t block the
trade of hemp plants.
But if you sell CBD from those same plants in any health or food products, the Food and
Drug Administration could technically come after you for violating interstate commerce laws.
And don’t even get me started on state cannabis laws.
Finding legal CBD is way harder than you think,
so we packed our bags and headed back to school.
Namely, to the University of Connecticut.
In January, UConn launched the nation’s only college course that gives hands-on experience
with growing cannabis plants.
Graduate student Peter Apicella and research grower Shelley Durocher showed us around their
greenhouse….
The stems are really purple.
It's a nice tall upright plant.
The leaflets are very narrow on each individual leaf.
The class only grows hemp,
which is like marijuana’s straight-edge twin.
All cannabis varieties, including hemp and marijuna, fall under one species:
Cannabis sativa.
The main difference is marijuana makes high quantities of THC, tetrahydrocannabinol --
which is federally illegal.
Industrial hemp, under federal law, shouldn’t contain more than 0.3 percent THC
-- but plants aren’t very good at following guidelines.
So even within hemp cultivars, there's a lot of variation as far as the morphology of the leaves.
that's where you start to see some of the variability and different
levels of THC and CBDs.
A hemp crop can start off making only CBD
-- and then unwittingly turn into a THC-laden field of marijuana.
That’s right: a hemp crop can become marijunana!
And if your CBD comes from a marijuana plant, selling it and buying it is a federal crime.
That’s why under the 2018 farm bill, hemp farms must submit to state or federal inspections.
These mixups are created by the basic biology behind THC and CBD,
which are both cannabinoids.
Cannabinoids are plants oils,
and cannabis comes packed with more than 100 versions of them
Scientists suspect cannabinoids protect the plant from UV rays,
much like sunscreen does for the human skin
They think that because up to a quarter of a cannabis plant’s weight can be just cannabinoids
-- and cannabinoid levels change with light exposure.
You'll have more cannabinoids with more light.
At the top of the plant, you'd get more
cannabinoids compared to flowers that are at the lower end of the plant.
A cannabinoid starts out as a bit of sugar
that hitchhikes around the plants’ enzymes,
changing its identity, bit by bit, with each ride.
Eventually this wandering sugar can bum a ride from one of two enzymes: THC-a synthase
or CBD-a synthase.
One ride leads to becoming THC.
The other to CBD.
Except in hemp, THC synthase is genetically dormant
That’s why hemp plants can make loads of CBD and little to no THC...
...a habit that will continue as long as the plants don’t pollinate each other.
When the plants DO reproduce, their traits mix -- and those once dormant genes can suddenly
be replaced with active ones.
Studies have found if two hemp plants
that purely make CBD hook up,
most of their offspring will be able to make THC.
In fact, some of those seedlings will ONLY make THC.
Any biological organism is going to fluctuate and that's something like farmers are always
and growers are always really concerned about -- that fluctuation.
If an inspection catches marijuana in a hemp field, then a whole crop could be lost.
That’s why UConn’s cannabis class only grows female hemp plants.
This is a preflower and it's a very small pistil.
Since it's this little tiny white hair we know pretty certainly that it's a female.
and they’re all clones.
You snip a part of a plant off you put it in soil with a little rooting hormone and
that cutting is actually genetically identical to that first mother plant that you took from.
And so these are all genetically identical to one of the mother plants we have in here.
Keeping a greenhouse all-female is easy, but it’s a different story growing hemp outdoors.
Cannabis is abundant in the wild -- meaning an outdoor hemp field is one gust of pollen
away from accidentally breeding marijuana.
So before you buy, ask the store how its extracts were made
and if they were validated by a third-party tester.
That’s important because extracting CBD or THC from cannabis plants is essentially
the same process.
If your supplier does it incorrectly, your CBD bottle might carry a little surprise.
It happens all the time.
Sometimes there is CBD.
A lot of times, there's not CBD.
Sometimes it even contains THC in the bottle when it's not supposed to.
It's really... it's a crap shoot.
That’s the voice of Rino Ferrarese, COO of the medical marijuana extractor CT Pharma,
and he’s tired of tainted CBD flooding the market.
Under Connecticut law, their company must ensure their products match the labels on
their bottles, which they accomplish through pharmaceutical-grade extraction.
Using liquid carbon dioxide or ethanol,
they can strip the cannabinoids from the plant material,
in a process that's similar to distilling liquor.
Add a little heat, and all of the carbon dioxide and ethanol evaporate away.
Specific temperatures can isolate CBD and THC on their own.
But Rino said many CBD producers don’t take these necessary steps with extraction.
Ok, we’re back in the office.
Let’s recap.
If you buy CBD...and it came from a hemp plant...and it’s pure...then you’re in the clear.
Not quite.
The FDA has prohibited the sale of CBD in any unapproved health products, dietary supplements
or food...
...which literally means everything except for one approved epilepsy drug is banned.
The Drug Enforcement Administration also still considers CBD a schedule 1 drug
unless it is in FDA-approved medicines.
So why do we still see so much CBD on shelves?
Well, what a lot of consumers don’t realize is federal agencies aren’t exactly on top
of policing those CBD products that you see in a gas station or convenience store.
Meanwhile, as those infractions go overlooked, many states and the district have moved to
decriminalize cannabis products like CBD.
The result is a limbo, where hemp-derived CBD is mostly illicit
but only if someone is watching.
For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Nsikan Akpan.