Is it Safe to Travel with CBD?

Two grandmothers were arrested recently for carrying CBD oil in their luggage.  Drug possession charges were dropped in both cases, but only after the women were charged and taken to jail.  The 2018 Farm Bill was supposed to make hemp-derived products legal throughout the United States, but some states and localities are still treating CBD as a
controlled substance.  What should you do if you are traveling?  Here are some things to try:

Photo by bruce mars on Pexels.com

• Take pills instead of CBD oil if you are flying.  Many CBD “liqui-gels” look just like vitamin E supplements.  Divide doses of medications and supplements into small bags or those AM/PM containers. It is unlikely that anyone will test everything in your luggage.  If you don’t take vitamins consider taking some just for the trip so that the CBD doesn’t stand out.
• Consider gummies.  These also blend in nicely with vitamin gummies or they can be tucked into a small plastic bag in your luggage.   Since they are not liquid they don’t attract attention like a bottle of oil. Suck on the gummy before chewing it in order to get some sublingual absorption.
• Look for small containers labeled “hemp oil” if you have some confidence that they contain CBD,   CBDistillery oils, for example, are labeled “Hemp Supplement” and “full spectrum hemp extract” even though “CBD” is in the brand. Avoid traveling with homemade oils and handwritten labels.
• Consider taking a break from CBD.  Sometimes this is a good way to discover whether it is really helping as much as you think.  There are no withdrawal symptoms. CBD is not addictive.

Do you have tips to share?  Do you disagree with me?  Please comment below to share your ideas.

The U.S. Government’s Patent on Cannabis for Health

At the same time that the U.S. government maintained that cannabis was an illegal drug with no medical value the U.S. Department of Health and Human services took out a patent on “Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants.” This apparent hypocrisy is the result of scientists and politicians having very different agendas. The patent was awarded to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in October 2003.  It was filed four years earlier by scientists who worked at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

In the U.S. a new use for an existing product that is “new, useful, and non-obvious” may be patented. In theory the patent holder can claim exclusive use of the product for that “use” and charge people money to license it. When government employees apply for a patent for work that they did during their work hours the government gets the patent. In some cases they are allowed to share in some of the profits from the patient in a limited way. Aidan Hampson, Julius Axelrod, and Maurizio Grimaldi saw promise in CBD and THC 20 years ago.  In their patent filing they wrote that:

“Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new-found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, Such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, Such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, Such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinsons disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, Such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention.”

Since that time cannabidiol (CBD) has been shown to be a neuroprotectant and to have powerful anti-seizure properties.  THC has been found to dissolve beta amyloid plaques in the brain, one theorized cause for Alzheimer’s Disease.

Will the government try to collect their money?  I guess that’s theoretically possible, but it’s hard to square this obvious acknowledgement that cannabis has value with the continued prohibition at the Federal level.  Some people in the government knew about the medical value of cannabis 20 years ago.  How come they didn’t tell the rest of us?

[edited 3/17/19 to add links to the authors’ biographies]

The Police can’t tell that your Hemp Flowers aren’t Marijuana – so Be Careful Out There.

Law enforcement has field tests for marijuana that can’t distinguish CBD hemp flower from marijuana.  If you live in a place where marijuana is illegal and CBD flower is legal you should take care with your hemp flower.  Avoid driving with it in your car and vape (don’t smoke) it in the privacy of your home.  Ok – maybe smoke it if you want.  Details are in this video from your friendly neighborhood Indiana police officer.  I love the caption “Working for You.”  I don’t think he’s working for me.

Farm Bill Confusion

Hemp farmers and hemp smokers cheered when president Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill in December 2018. Industrial hemp is now legal in all 50 states, and interstate commerce in hemp is also legal. The new law also appeared to legalize derivatives of hemp including CBD. The DEA could no longer treat CBD as an illegal drug like THC.

At some point people read the fine print. Industrial hemp remained defined in the following manner:

The term `hemp’ means the plant Cannabis sativa L. 
 and any part of that plant, including the seeds thereof and all 
 derivatives, extracts, cannabinoids, isomers, acids, salts, and 
 salts of isomers, whether growing or not, with a delta-9 
 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on 
 a dry weight basis.

This means that hemp-derived products, such as CBD oil, still had to contain less than 0.3% delta 9 THC. All such products on the U.S. market already contain such low amounts.

States and Indian Tribes are allowed to manage hemp growing in their states. Section 297 of the new law outlines the guidelines for these state programs. The section that concerned some hemp flower enthusiasts on Reddit is below:

“SEC. 297B. STATE AND TRIBAL PLANS.
 [must develop]a procedure for testing, using post-
 decarboxylation or other similarly reliable methods, delta-
 9 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration levels of hemp 
 produced in the State or territory of the Indian tribe.

Essentially the states and tribes are required to have a “reliable method” to assure that the industrial hemp being grown is really legal hemp, not illegal marijuana. They list “post-decarboxylation” as one example of a reliable method. Presumably it is not the only reliable method.

Currently available industrial hemp flowers sometimes contain both very low levels of delta 9 THC and very low levels of THCA. When hemp flower is smoked or vaped some of the THCA is converted to THC. If all hemp plants were tested post-decarboxylation the effective THC levels might be higher than the legal limit. Some of today’s legal hemp might not pass the new test.

The new law does not actually require post-decarb testing. It says nothing about THCA. It’s too soon to know exactly how the .3% figure will be applied this time next year.

U.S. Hemp is currently grown in demonstration programs authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill. These programs are expected to continue and states will be able to expand them this year. Hemp is being grown for seed, for fiber, and for CBD. The strains of cannabis (hemp) grown for these different purposes are quite different from each other. As states continue to develop these programs we should see more hemp on the market in 2019.  We just don’t know exactly how potent it will be.