Marijuana is the Mexican Word for Cannabis.It is a wonder
plant that has been hijacked and given a bad name by underworld gangs,
exploiting a chemical compound in the plant called THC that produces
intoxicating highs sought by drug users.
From the same Cannabis plant there is a chemical compound
called CBD. This has negligible intoxicating THC content and will increasingly become
freely available online and in supermarkets, pharmacies and health shops
Bad publicity, and confusion, prompted governments around
the world to apply a blanket ban on all cannabis products until recently. Now
as more reliable information is becoming available, Cannabis CBD is about to
play a big part in health and wellness programmes worldwide, as this headline
proclaims
Prescription-Free CBD products from Cannabis set to Disrupt the $1.1
Trillion Pharmaceutical Industry
Traditionally, most people thought about cannabis as a
banned drug. For the last 100 years it has been illegal virtually throughout
the entire world. It seemed its only use and feature was to give an illicit
intoxicating high that is potentially addictive and harmful.
The intoxicating high, produced by the cannabinoid THC
(tetrahydrocannabinol),is accompanied by the risk of developing addiction dependency
leading to possible mental health damage.
People using illegal psychoactive cannabis products make up
a $40 billion market in the United States alone. Simply converting those users
to legal cannabis multiplies the market five times. And, of course, once
cannabis is legal, entire new groups who have not used the drug because they
respect or fear the law will grow the industry further. After that, new
products like CBD beverages will fuel even more growth.
Focusing solely on the intoxicating high feature of cannabis is a mistake. Cannabis was used
as a medical product in Biblical times. And, today, medical applications could
be many times larger than the THC intoxicating highs psychoactive market.
And the biggest opportunity of all could be in non-regulated
health products. CBD (cannabidiol) and the other non-psychoactive cannabinoids
in cannabis can do much of what the pharmaceutical companies promise. And they
can do it without a prescription and at a comparatively modest cost.
Brightfield Group, a cannabis research firm, projects that
this mainstreaming of the product will cause the hemp-based CBD market to grow
from $519 million in 2018 to an incredible $22 billion by 2022.
CBD, or cannbidiol, is the primary non-psychoactive
component of cannabis. It is a powerful health chemical with the potential to
alleviate or cure dozens of diseases
These days, instead of specially bred low-THC cannabis, some
of the top companies in the industry use Hemp to produce CBD.
This variety of Hemp CBD from Cannabis, naturally contains
low levels of THC – under .3% – far too little to cause a high,and gives it a
major advantage over the kind of cannabis consumers usually think about: It can
be shipped across state and some national lines, allowing a domestic
and export market to develop.
Hemp production is growing across the country at an
astonishing rate – supply is unlikely to be an issue even with the massive
predicted growth of products produced from raw hemp.
Hemp-farming on its
own is unlikely to be an outstanding performer – the added value is in extracting
the CBD and other cannabinoids, in quality manufacturing, and in designing and
selling great products.
This variety of Hemp came about when a family in Colorado,
the Stanley Brothers, began growing cannabis and developed a strain with a very
high ratio of CBD to THC. It led to the idea of helping patients who did not
want to experience the high which THC brings.
This strain of high CBD-low-THC cannabis turned out to have a
dramatic effect on children with a seizure disorder called Dravets syndrome.
Children who took the medicine saw the frequency and severity of their seizures
plummet
If Dravet’s syndrome sounds familiar, it should. Dravet’s is
one of the two rare forms of epilepsy for which GW Pharmaceuticals received FDA
approval for Epidiolex. It broke the glass ceiling, becoming the first U.S.
Food & Drug Administration-approved drug formulated from Hemp CBD.
AND. AND – Epidiolex’s only active ingredient is CBD!
It’s stories like that which inform Brightfield Group’s
optimistic assessment of the industry. CBD and other such non-psychoactive
cannabinoids have the potential to treat dozens of conditions from minor
inflammation to the most serious seizure disorders.
CBD and its cannabis chemical cousins have the potential to
completely disrupt massive chunks of the medical industry, from
over-the-counter medications like aspirin, to exotic treatments costing tens of
thousands of dollars per year.
Make a note – CBD.
