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Cannabis, CBD Sagas About to Get Real

If you have been waiting and hoping for a federal change in law or policy about cannabis and CBD products, it’s OK to start holding your breath now, because real changes are likelier than ever during 2021.

Eric G

Presumably, federal legalization will allow for branding that crosses state lines and removes the uncertainty that is holding back some packagers from getting involved in the market.

After all, with cannabis and CBD products, there has developed an unholy combination of uncertainty about what the federal government considers illegal, with hellaciously large public desire for these products. State after state makes cannabis and CBD products legal, but still federal law declares most of them illegal. At least life was a little easier for packagers during the years when the feds followed a policy of not enforcing federal prohibitions against folks who, for example, complied with the requirements of an individual state that had legalized cannabis products. But the memorandum that policy was based on was withdrawn a few years ago, and federal policy since then hasn’t been as clear.

It’s been recognized widely for a long time that the solution to this kind of conundrum would have to involve changing the federal law, not merely FDA enforcement priorities about foods and drugs.

Cannabis (aka marijuana) is still a “Schedule 1” drug according to federal law—on the same list as heroin and LSD—meaning that it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” says the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Recent years have seen an increasing number of U.S. states change their laws: 15 states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana, and 36 states OK medical use.

Reportedly, FDA had sent some proposed changes in law and policy to the White House for review back in June 2020, but they never came out the other end, and now the Biden administration put a hold on all pending changes. But there’s reason to think its time has finally come once the Biden team gets its feet fully under it.

And now, word is that the new Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other lawmakers support federal legalization of marijuana (and want to undo some of the effects of the decades-old “war on drugs”), as do a reported majority of the public.

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