CBD News Aggregator – It’s been over a year since the 2018 Farm Bill legalized the commerce of hemp and CBD. Yet, CBD is still not regulated as a dietary supplement by the FDA.
This may come as a surprise to many people who’ve already incorporated CBD into their lives. Among the 14 percent of Americans who use CBD, most believe those products are FDA regulated.
The FDA wants to regulate CBD, too. Over the past five years, the agency has issued reports to Congress on their assessment of the marketplace and CBD’s safety. They’ve also issued dozens of warning letters to companies mislabeling their products.
Still, the FDA still hasn’t issued formal regulations for the CBD industry. Why?
CBD is the new kid on the block
There are many factors at play here. The biggest reason is that CBD is simply very new. In its current form, CBD is considered a New Dietary Ingredient (NDI), and the review
process is slow for NDI notifications. This process may include conducting lab tests and research studies, submitting data to the FDA for evaluation, and potentially many rounds of feedback and revisions.
But, in the case of CBD, the agency appears to be moving even slower than usual. There are thousands of CBD companies now operating within the country, but the FDA’s most recent round of random sample testing included only 30 total CBD products. The agency also has not disclosed which channels they obtained these products from— a necessary detail to identify the most common source of mislabeled products. The lack of significant data presents an obstacle for the FDA’s industry-wide guidance.