Beverage director Maxwell Reis serves a drink containing Cannabidiol CBD extract with a marijuana leaf motif at the Gracias Madre restaurant in West Hollywood, Calif. The trouble with writing about marijuana these days is that it's both a very old story and a very new one. Some people have been smoking joints, dabbling in CBD creams, and sipping cannabis-based bedtime tinctures for years; others are only getting up to speed now that recreational marijuana has been legalized in some states.
“Ten years ago, when you referred to cannabis, you were talking about dried plant material that people smoked,” says Ryan Vandrey, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Proponents claim that CBD provides relief from anxiety, pain, insomnia and much more. For people who don’t enjoy the typical marijuana high but are looking for something to take the edge off, those claims may be particularly appealing.
• There is “substantial” evidence that cannabis modestly reduces chronic pain. “It’s not as strong as a narcotic pain reliever like an opiate,” Piomelli notes. “So it’s not as effective, but it may be more usable long term.” And that approach, says Vandrey, is how cannabis should be tested and sold as medicine: “The ideal path forward is where we figure out which components of the cannabis plant help with specific symptoms or health conditions, and we develop refined and targeted medicines,” says Vandrey.“In many, the list of conditions for which medical cannabis is authorized is very long,” says Piomelli. “Out of those, we really have evidence for maybe one or two.
“People are throwing CBD at every condition under the sun at random doses and expecting it to work,” says Vandrey. That’s because smoking marijuana produces many of the same harmful chemicals and carcinogens as smoking tobacco. Yet marijuana smokers don’t have a higher risk of lung cancer than non-smokers.The dose may explain why. “Tobacco smokers might smoke 20 or 40 cigarettes a day,” notes Piomelli. “I’ve never heard of someone smoking 40 joints a day.”
That’s concerning, but it’s less than the roughly 20 percent of drinkers or 65 percent of nicotine users who become dependent. CBD-only products sold online or in stores fare no better. For example, only about 30 percent of 84 CBD products that Vandrey bought online were accurately labeled.
Stop
JFalschung Please NPR I am a huge fan and listen everyday but with all the things going in right now is this worth ur resources?
Might have been helpful to point out the lack of research is directly related to the federal ban. Hard to know about something when you aren’t allowed to study it.
At least it’s not crack
After extensively researching & experimenting w/ the product the experimenters concluded in their final analysis '.....ummm what did I just say dude'
It does cause climate change and racism... right
As a sidebar, maybe several people started writing papers while engaged in cough, research.
Hmm... If only there were other countries where this was legal. If said countries existed, there would probably be lots of data, or at least a trend. Too bad there isn't though, huh? Guess we have to invent the wheel...
Sshhhhhh! It for the hoax, girl!
I’ve never tried it but I’m just looking for pain relief.
It’s been demonized for the same reason it’s better than most drugs being legally pushed on people by doctors!
All the kids at school smoke pot my friends kid grows it vapes seems ok
Great Question!
Written by someone very poorly informed.
Local locals start smoking pot around ten including my architecht friend and they are all ok
Still safer than alcohol.
Number 11 is it makes Pink Floyd sound even more pissah!
One adult should not be allowed to tell another adult what to put in their bodies. It’s ridiculous.
Still. Let the ppl decide what they want to put in their bodies. If a man wants to put a pickle jar up his ass then so be it.