America Loves Its Unregulated Wellness Chemicals – By Amanda Mull (The Atlantic) / Jan 1 2020
CBD was just the beginning.
The middle-aged woman in front of me in the Atlanta airport’s check-in line surely meant well. “You should try some CBD for your dog if she gets nervous,” she said, motioning to my chihuahua, who sat atop my suitcase, peering uneasily through the mesh panels of her travel carrier. “They say it’s great for that.”
She didn’t say who “they” were, but at this point, it could be anyone: her teenage kids, her elderly mom, the barista at her local coffee shop. A shop selling only CBD—short for “cannabidiol”—in oils, vapes, tinctures, and gummies might have opened next to her suburban grocery store, or she might have heard that Martha Stewart is developing a line of CBD products for both pets and people. Purveyors of the chemical credit it with alleviating everything from anxiety to autism, with widely varying levels of proof to back up their claims.
Seven months ago, the United States hit Peak CBD, at least according to Google Trends. During the high point, in May, Google received more than three times as many queries for CBD as it did for Beyoncé. CBD belongs to a class of chemicals called cannabinoids, dozens of which have been identified in cannabis and hemp plants, and just a couple of years ago, it was virtually unknown in the U.S. Americans spent last year trying to answer the same questions my parents asked me after Christmas Eve dinner, three days before my airport encounter: What is CBD, why is it everywhere now, and what does it do?
That last question can’t be reliably answered—the research just isn’t there yet. But the knowledge gap hasn’t done much to dampen consumer interest in CBD, and manufacturers looking for the next big thing have already started experimenting with lesser-known cannabinoids like cannabinol, or CBN. Cannabinoids are a salesman’s dream: When little is known, virtually anything can be passed off as possible.
Until CBD’s ascendence, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—the chemical in weed centrally responsible for making people feel high—was the most famous of the cannabinoids. Higher concentrations of THC are what mark the legal distinction between cannabis and hemp, which are virtually identical in most other ways. After a years-long pilot program, growing industrial hemp became legal nationwide at the end of 2018. Most cannabinoids can be extracted from hemp, which means that the U.S. currently has a ready supply of the chemicals for the first time in its history.
Continue to article: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/01/why-cbd-took-over-america/604327/
