By Michael Krawitz with the assistance of the Veterans Action Council.
For many decades, those of us working at the intersection of Veteran healthcare, medical cannabis advocacy, and international drug policy have encountered the same response from the DEA that the international treaties allow the DEA, up until now, to block medical access to cannabis.
The 1961 Single Convention defines “cannabis” primarily as the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant from which the resin has not been extracted. Seeds and leaves without the flowering tops are explicitly excluded from that definition.¹ Governments around the world pointed to the treaty framework as justification for limiting access to medical cannabis, imposing restrictive monitoring systems on patients, and maintaining punitive approaches toward cannabis cultivation and possession, even in cases involving serious illness. For Veterans living with chronic pain, PTSI, or other service-related conditions, these policies often translated into a stark reality: legal obstacles standing between patients and a medicine that many found effective when other treatments had failed.
At the same time, the same treaty language was frequently used to justify the strict regulation of hemp-derived products, including cannabinoids with low abuse potential, such as cannabidiol (CBD). These compounds originate from the cannabis plant; many regulators assumed they must automatically fall under the same international narcotics controls as flowering tops and resins of the cannabis plant. That interpretation is now being challenged.
In 2018, the World Health Organization Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) conducted a comprehensive review of CBD. It concluded: “Cannabidiol (CBD) exhibits no effects indicative of any abuse or dependence potential… CBD is generally well tolerated with a good safety profile.”² Based on this evaluation, the WHO recommended that preparations containing predominantly CBD and not more than trace levels of THC should not be placed under international drug control.
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Author: High Times Contributors / High Times
