AHPA submitted comments to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday to stress that cannabidiol (CBD) requires no international drug scheduling as an individual substance and encourage the U.S. to support this position.

AHPA's comments were in response to an April 9 FDA request for input concerning abuse potential, actual abuse, medical usefulness, trafficking, and impact of scheduling changes on availability for medical use of five cannabis derived drug substances, including CBD. The input gathered by FDA will be considered in preparing the U.S. response at the World Health Organization's (WHO's) 40th Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) being held in Geneva, Switzerland on June 4-8.

AHPA's comments express support for the November 2017 conclusions of the WHO 39th ECDD which state that CBD is not currently a scheduled substance on its own (only as a component of cannabis extracts) and that current information does not justify a change in this scheduling status nor does it justify scheduling of the substance.

"Given that ECDD found no case reports of abuse or dependence relating to the use of CBD, extracts or preparations containing almost exclusively CBD should be subject to critical review at the upcoming meeting," said AHPA President Michael McGuffin. "AHPA is not aware of any information that suggests that extracts or preparations of Cannabis containing almost exclusively CBD are any more subject to abuse or dependence than CBD itself and therefore recommends and requests that the U.S. support a position to acknowledge that these extracts and preparations should not be scheduled under any international drug control convention."

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