FDA To Finally Regulate CBD Market!

The FDA is gearing up for full scale product testing which will cover every category of hemp related goods sold in the United States.

This move could not be coming at a better time! Currently, the industry is absolutely flooded with CBD products of all types, none of which go through any type of testing or regulation by the government.

This lack of oversight has led to products containing dangerous additives and chemicals making their way on to the open market and could have been responsible for the ongoing vaping crisis that has claimed the lives of dozens of people. In case you forgot, there have been several high profile cases of teenagers passing away due to complications from vaping cannabis cartridges that were tainted with vitamin E.

The FDA Cannabidiol (CBD) Policy Working Group has developed a two-phase strategy for obtaining the information by performing a sampling study of the current CBD marketplace to understand CBD and related cannabinoid content, and possible contaminants, in a range of products.

The near-term plan involved a small sampling and analysis study (~200 samples) conducted by the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Office of Regulatory Science (CFSAN/ORS). The long-term sampling plan will involve a much larger 1000-3000 sample survey1 of the CBD marketplace conducted over the remainder of this fiscal year and the beginning of the next fiscal year. In addition to the use of agency resources, it will be necessary to implement a contract for the collection and analysis of samples to complete this much larger study and report the findings.

The overall goal of the long-term portion of the study, obtained through a contract laboratory, will be the collection of CBD-containing products of various types, including foods and cosmetics, from geographic locations throughout the U.S., and the analysis of these products for CBD content, for related cannabinoid content and profiles, as well as for chemical and microbiological contaminants that could be present in CBD products.

Chemical contaminants of interest would include toxic elements (e.g. lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium), pesticides and industrial chemicals, and residual processing solvents. Microbiological contaminants of interest would include Salmonella spp, Listeria monocytogenes (Lm), and Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), as well as aerobic plate count.