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March 8, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
15:02
Is the DEA criminalizing CBD oil in crazy power grab?
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- I've got some breaking news for you today on CBDs and hemp extract.
Turns out that the DEA, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to criminalize cannabidiol products taking effect January 13, 2017.
Now, I don't want you to get overly freaked out about this because the industry is going to fight back And many people believe that the DEA has overstepped its bounds and it's going to be challenged in court.
And it's not even certain how the DEA may or may not try to enforce this rule.
But they did write the rule, and it does specifically list cannabidiol, CBD, and other cannabinoids in hemp as Schedule I controlled substances.
That's a big deal.
So let me read it for you here.
This is from Natural News and also HempScience.News.
My story is entitled, The Empire Strikes Back, DEA Quietly Announces Schedule I Status for CBD Extracts to Comply with United Nations Demands.
Yeah, this is about compliance with international treaties.
The CBD prohibition begins on January 13, 2017.
And here's a ruling.
It's from the Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, 21 CFR, Part 1308.
Docket number DEA-342.
Establishment of a new drug code for marijuana extract.
Action.
Final rule.
And it says, specifically...
That marijuana extract will be defined as, quote, an extract containing one or more cannabinoids that has been derived from any plant of the genus cannabis.
There you go.
That's every cannabinoid.
That's CBD. That's CBDA. That's CBG, CBC, CBN. It's cannabinol.
It's every, including THC. It is every cannabinoid in the plant.
There are over 100 of them, and many of them are, of course, therapeutic in different ways.
This is clearly an effort by the DEA to destroy natural medicine.
And really, they say this is about compliance with the United Nations.
This is really about protecting the monopoly for big pharma.
This is about criminalizing natural medicine so that you can't have access to it, so that you're forced to buy their opioids and other prescription medications that are very costly and very addictive and very dangerous.
They're killing tens of thousands of Americans every year.
So we posted a petition at naturalnews.com.
Just go to naturalnews.com slash legalizecbd.
and there you can sign a petition that we're going to be delivering to the Trump administration on January 24, assuming the inauguration is actually completed and Trump is sworn into office.
We're going to deliver that petition.
We will mostly redact your email address to protect your privacy, so don't worry about that.
Sign our petition at naturalnews.com slash legalizecbd.
Now, let me give you some other facts about all of this.
The DEA has for a long time had CBDs in a kind of gray area in terms of its enforcement actions and also its regulatory actions, and that gray area continues right now.
There's a lot of conflicting information in the industry.
And it also varies state by state, because some states are, of course, medical marijuana legalization states, whereas other states still criminalize medical marijuana.
There is an amendment that protects CBD consumers right now in 28 states.
It's called the Rohrbacher-Fahr Amendment, and it protects consumers in these 28 states where medical marijuana is legalized from being arrested or prosecuted by the DEA for possession of CBD products.
Now, that amendment, importantly, has to be renewed every year, and it was just recently renewed on December 9th, 2016.
That was just about a week ago from when I'm recording this.
It was renewed then, but it was part of a temporary government funding bill that will expire on April 28, 2017.
So here are the dates.
Let me spell this out for you.
On April 28, 2017, if the government funding bill that contains this Rohrabacher-Fahr amendment is not reauthorized, then that amendment vanishes, and it instantly criminalizes CBD products in all 50 states, including the 28 states where medical marijuana is legalized.
However, the DEA's new regulatory rule doesn't kick in until January 13 of 2017.
So right now, consumers can purchase these products all over the country and distributors and manufacturers can freely sell these products.
From state to state all across the country without DEA interference right now.
But that might end on January 13.
Actually, we'll have to wait and see what the DEA does.
Are they going to try to enforce the Schedule I classification of CBD products?
I've already been told that at least one major manufacturer and distributor is going to cease sales across the United States on January 13.
Some may continue to sell the products and hope that they can avoid possible DEA posturing or aggressive legal action.
They may end up in court or in prison.
And they may end up being the test case where the industry sues the DEA for interference with commerce and so on.
So there's a lot that's in a gray area right now.
If you are a CBD consumer, it's very doubtful that you have any particularly high risk from DEA. The DEA would be targeting the manufacturers, producers, and retailers of products, not so much consumers who happen to buy a bottle here or there, especially if it's virtually no THC in the product.
Now, speaking of CBD and THC levels in CBD products, currently many people, most people in the industry believe that as long as a product contains less than 0.3% THC by volume, that it is, quote, legal and won't be messed with by the DEA.
But that even is an assumption.
There is no statement from the DEA that affirms the, quote, legality of those products.
That's just a widespread belief.
And so far, the DEA hasn't gone after companies who are selling just CBD products.
But under this new regulatory statement, the DEA insists that any amount of THC or CBD or CBDA or CBG or any cannabinoid in a product makes it, by definition, a Schedule I controlled Now, that's very concerning to me because, as you know, I'm the lab science director of CWC Labs, and I pioneered a mass spec method for quantitating CBD molecules.
With very high precision, you know, very extreme sensitivity in all kinds of different consumer products.
And to validate my method, one of the things I did is I went and bought Nutiva brand hemp seeds.
Just off the shelf hemp seeds.
I bought them at the grocery store.
It's not even considered a dietary supplement.
It's not even considered a CBD product.
But in that product, I was able to detect, because of the extreme sensitivity of my mass spec method, I was able to detect CBD molecules and THC molecules at very, very trace levels.
I mean, way, way, way below 0.3%.
We're talking, you know, many orders of magnitude lower.
But according to the DEA... The very fact that there are any molecules that are cannabinoids in Nutiva hemp seeds would, by their insane definition, make Nutiva guilty of distributing, you know, of being drug dealers, basically.
And it would turn every grocery store into a drug dealing center.
I guess the DEA thinks they're going to go raid, you know, Whole Foods for selling hemp seeds in every natural grocery store all across America.
That is essentially what they are asserting at this point.
And it's ridiculous, of course.
It's completely absurd, but this is the position that they've now taken.
So what can you do right now to fight back?
Well, the only way to fight this is to push for change at the federal level.
We need an act of Congress, frankly.
We need a new law passed under the Trump administration, because it doesn't look like Obama's going to do this.
It's his DEA that issued this rule.
Maybe the Trump administration would be open to this.
That's our hope, and that's the goal of our petition.
So be sure to sign our petition at naturalnews.com slash legalize CBD.
Maybe if we get enough grassroots support and we can make the case to the Trump administration that legalizing CBD will save the government money on health care costs, because then people don't need those expensive prescription medications for many kinds of self-treatments, then maybe the Trump administration would get behind this, and then maybe the Trump administration would get behind this, and they could pass a law that would legalize CBD nationwide.
But I'm not counting on that.
We've got Senator Sessions likely to be the Attorney General.
He's not a hemp-friendly guy.
And there's really no one in the Trump administration that I know of that is on the record in support of natural medicine or certainly hemp extracts as dietary supplements.
So, I don't know.
We'll see where this goes, but we've got to bring pressure to the issue.
We have to stay legal, of course, which means, sadly, if they criminalize this substance and they make good on that stance, then we won't be able to enjoy the benefits of this product.
Which is absurd because it's a naturally occurring molecule in plants all over the country.
That is just an example of how evil big government can be no matter who is in office.
It also shows you the power of Big Pharma because, as you know, Big Pharma wants to patent and control CBD as their substance, their prescription medication.
They know that dietary supplements that really, really work and help millions of people are a threat to their profit model.
And so even though they have patents on CBD, and even though there's a huge body of scientific literature that shows CBD efficacy for things like epilepsy and stress reduction and post-cancer treatment recovery and things like that, We're good to go.
If this rule stands and we don't reverse this at the DEA, we're going to be making America more like a police state again.
You know, we've had enough of that.
It's time for freedom.
It's time for natural medicine to be legal.
And it's fine for it to be regulated in a sense.
We want honest labeling, obviously.
You know, we want qualified claims that are based on good, solid science and all of those things.
We don't want hucksters making radically exaggerated claims about products or selling counterfeit products that are mislabeled.
We don't want any of that.
But we do want the freedom to be able to sell real, authentic, genuine, and helpful products that can help people improve the quality of their lives.
And we need to live in a nation where we have the liberty to choose our own natural medicine.
So, President-elect Trump, if you or anyone from your staff is listening to this, this is a big, big issue, not just for people on the left, but also American patriots like myself, people who supported your administration.
And we know that you're a genius when it comes to deal-making and business and economics.
But we need someone in your administration to also make America free again when it comes to natural medicine.
And cannabinoids is a great place to start.
Remember, CBDs are non-psychoactive.
They're non-addictive.
They have a good, solid body of science supporting their efficacious and very safe use.
And they've been in widespread over-the-counter use for many many years with virtually zero reports of any negative side effects and absolutely no deaths associated with them whatsoever.
This is a very safe, very efficacious, very scientifically validated product.
And we need to let the American people have access to this natural medicine as a free market solution that can help lower health care costs, improve quality of life, and also just create more competition out there for dietary supplements that actually work for people.
One more thought on this, President-elect Trump.
If you're going to eliminate Obamacare, which is a great idea, by the way.
Obamacare is a complete disaster.
We've got to get rid of it.
But you're going to put something in its place.
You need to be able to control healthcare costs, lower costs, which really means putting the consumer back in charge of his or her decision-making on what works best for them.
And if you ban CBDs and make them illegal, then you're going to drive more people, veterans and senior citizens, into the high cost, highly toxic prescription medications that just enrich the pharmaceutical companies while destroying health.
They mask symptoms.
They don't eliminate health problems typically.
They just make things worse while the government wastes billions of dollars on drugs that enrich the pharmaceutical industry.
That is not a sustainable model for how we make America healthy again.
Again, we have to give American consumers a free market choice.
And that means legalizing access to natural medicine supplements that are honestly labeled, that are backed by good solid science, that have a long and well documented safety track record, and that are much lower cost than the prescription medications they might otherwise turn to.
So cannabinoids and hemp extracts can be a very important part of the solution for replacing Obamacare and allowing American consumers to shop around for the health solutions that serve them best, while also simultaneously lowering long-term health costs for both state and federal governments.
So it's win-win for everybody.
And besides, do we really want to criminalize over a million people in America?
Aren't our prisons already too full of people who've been busted with actual pot with THC in it?
Do we want to throw CBD criminals in with them?
CBD, you can't even get high off of that stuff.
It's a dietary supplement.
It is a therapeutic molecule.
It's not a recreational drug.
It's not even addictive.
So let's do what's right for America.
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