We have some very exciting news for you. It may have been a few months but we still want to talk about it. For those who do not know yet, Epidiolex was approved by the FDA in June 2018. The long-awaited decision from the FDA is in. Epidiolex, the CBD based medicine for epilepsy made by GW-Pharmaceuticals is officially FDA approved. And we are going to talk about what this might mean for the CBD industry and we also hope to calm down anybody’s concern that this is going to destroy the CBD industry. As we know, a lot of people are worried about that. And we are just going to share our thoughts. Of course, we don’t know what exactly is going to happen but these are our thoughts on the matter and we hope you enjoy to read them.
Is Epidiolex CBD the beginning of a change?
So first off, a lot of people are worried that CBD is only going to be available now through a doctor’s prescription. We don’t think that’s gonna happen. Epidiolex you have to keep in mind is a different kind of CBD than the CBD most people are buying right now. Epidiolex is a purified CBD. The closest thing to it may be on the on the market is a isolated CBD product or products made with CBD isolate.
So Epidiolex has made from a cannabis plant, but when they make the extraction they separate the CBD from everything else and then put it into the carrier oil with some flavoring and a couple other ingredients. And that’s what makes Epidiolex.
Is the CBD market in trouble?
Now as you know, with most of the other products on the market today, people are looking for the entourage effect. And that’s why many people will continue to prefer a Fully Extracted CBD Oil. So they’re looking for those other components to the plant. They’re looking for the other cannabinoids, the terpenes, the flavonoids, all the other stuff that you find in their. Antioxidant so on and so forth. Just naturally occurring components in a cannabis extract. People are still going to want that. We think that the demand for that it’s not going to go anywhere.
And the reason why we think this is really good that it was approved is, it’s going to make the industry as a whole more credible. There’s going to be better quality standards out there.
We hope that the FDA is going to playing nicely. But they’re gonna still go after people that are making medical claims. They’re never going to be ok with that obviously.
A concession to the effectiveness of CBD
But now, that CBD is an FDA approved drug with clear medicinal value, obviously they wouldn’t approve something that didn’t have medicinal value, the scheduling is going to be clear. So a lot of people, if you ask most sources will tell you that CBD is schedule 1 because it’s a cannabinoid and all cannabinoids are schedule 1. Of course that is a bit of a murky topic.
But now what we are hoping happens and what’s inevitable we believe is, that CBD will either be de-scheduled or moved into a different schedule. Either schedule 2 or schedule 3. Because obviously it has medicinal value so it can’t stay in schedule 1.
The DEA said it will change the industry
So, it remains to be seen what’s going to happen with that. Some representatives from the DEA have said, that if this goes through, there will be big changes in the CBD industry and we do believe that that is true. But we don’t think that these are going to be negative changes. We think this is going to add a lot of credibility.
They’re still going to be demand for people who don’t have Dravet Syndrome or Lennox-Gastaut. Because Epidiolex is approved for this two conditions, this two forms of childhood epilepsy. And as far as we know, these are the only two approved conditions where a doctor can prescribe the uses of Epidiolex.
Available with Prescription for 2 types of Epilepsy
If the doctor chooses to prescribe it for another reason, we believe they may have the power to do that. But if people want to use CBD, for example for anxiety, sleep or for pain relief and if they’re not able to get in a prescription they’re obviously going to look for artisinal or nutraceutical CBD products.
Our conclusion on this is that there’s nothing to worry about and that it’s not a zero-sum game. It’s not Epidiolex versus the nutraceutical industry or vice versa. It’s both are going to coexist and they’re going to have different purposes, they’re gonna have different consumers and they’re going to operate as different businesses. One will be covered by insurance (we are hoping, obviously since it’s an FDA approved drug), whereas the other will be still over-the-counter nutraceutical.
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The demand for fully extracted CBD remains
The best example for that is, that for decades now we’ve had Marinol, which is a synthetic version of THC. People still prefer the whole plant product and you’re going to have people that are going to prefer whole plant CBD extracts over Epidiolex. Even though Epidiolex is not analogous to Marinol, because Marinol is not planned derived at all. It’s a synthetic cannabinoid made to mimic the effects THC.
Whereas Epidiolex is a little bit in between. It’s still made from a plant but it’s isolated. There is some research to back up that there are other cannabinoids such as THCa and in some cases THC that are helpful as well for epilepsy. Again in some cases.
The majority of the clinical research has been focused on CBD and that’s why Epidiolex was approved. Overall this is great news, it’s a day to remember in the history of cannabis, it is the first FDA-approved plant derived cannabis product. So let’s all celebrate together this is a great thing.
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