United States: The FDA pushes its recommendations for CBD

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. food regulatory agency, has submitted a draft regulation for the CBD to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review.

The content of the document, titled «Cannabidiol Enforcement Policy; Draft Guidance for Industry,» has not yet been made public.

This latest submission of recommendations comes after the FDA published separate guidelines to promote clinical research on cannabis. This document was also reviewed by the OMB before it could be published.

However, it is not yet clear whether the FDA will publish the guidance document on CBD currently under review by White House officials. The agency has, in fact, said very little about CBD since hemp was legalized at the federal level under the 2018 Farm Bill. In some cases, it has often limited itself to issuing warnings to cannabis companies—such as when certain companies claimed that CBD could treat or cure the coronavirus—and to recalling certain products that did not meet food safety standards.

The FDA has also recently submitted a report at the conference on the state of the CBD market, which describes the studies the agency has conducted on the content and quality of cannabis-derived products it has tested over the past six years.

Also this month, a bill of law The FDA's spending plan was released, including a provision calling for «funding to develop a regulatory framework for CBD products.».

All of these developments could quickly shed some light on the status of CBD in the United States, which is currently subject to a mix of state-level cannabis regulations and federal hemp regulations.