*** This blog post is unique — and a little different than most of our other blogs. It’s based on the new documentary CBDNation and its in-depth look at how today’s CBD movement was sparked. Most of the content and quotes in this blog are straight from the documentary. If you want to learn more you can rent out CBD Nation for yourself here. Enjoy!
Not Convinced About CBD? This Documentary Could Change That…
On August 25th a new CBD-centric documentary came out. And though it wasn’t the very first of its kind this documentary may very well be the thing that ushers in a new era — an era where CBD is accepted by the medical community and the mainstream alike. Featuring over thirty leading Phds, MD’s, experts, and other industry pioneers, never before has anyhemp/cannabis/CBD-related film come close to capturing the breadth and depth of knowledge as this one did.
Forbes said it “exposes 60 years of often ignored published reports and ongoing research” and agreed that the facts it presents “can save lives.” Newsbreak said it “spotlights decades of medical research.” Mediums like Amazon and YouTube speak volumes via thousands of rave reviews.
We’ll just say that CBDNation clearly demonstrated CBD’s importance…and clearly explained why it’s more important now than ever before. Here are some of the documentary’s key takeaways.
- CBD research was wrong for over 40 years
- CBD-rich cannabis is making a comeback
- CBD could help those with epilepsy
- CBD could help veterans, too (in more ways than one!)
- CBD could be more important now than ever before
CBD research was wrongly ignored for over 40 years
Ignored by most groups, that is…all while semi-secretly being acknowledged by the US government.
“In 1976 the National Institute on Drug Abuse published a 250-page report, which discussed the medical uses of cannabis,” explained Martin A. Lee, ProjectCBD’s director. “It stated that the potential benefits of cannabis should be studied. It discussed its therapeutic effects as an anticonvulsant, an antidepressant and an antibacterial. The report referred to cannabis as reducing nausea and vomiting in cancer patients, treating glaucoma, asthma and pain. It stated that significant pain reduction was seen in cancer patients, and it even discussed cannabis as helping reduce tumor sizes.”
And then there’s the Shafer report, which Lee also dives into. “The Shafer Commission was appointed by President Nixon, and its report stated that ‘a careful search of the literature and testimony of the nation’s health officials has not revealed a single human fatality in the United States proven to have resulted solely from the ingestion of marijuana’ and that ‘most users, young and old, demonstrate an average or above-average degree of social functioning, academic achievement, and job performance.’”
Image courtesy of http://cbdnationfilm.com/about/.
But perhaps most telling of all is a 1988 ruling by the DEA’s very own administrative law judge. After looking at all the evidence, he came to the conclusion that cannabis is the safest known therapeutically active medicine known to man. Seriously. “Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects,” the DEA report explains. “But marijuana is not such a substance.”
Leading researchers were ignored, too. “We published our findings thirty-seven years ago: cannabidiol (CBD) blocks epileptic attacks in patients. What happened? Nothing for thirty years,” laments Dr. Raphael Mouchoulam, the practical godfather of cannabis research.
“Nothing happened until desperate parents like those in this film did their own research and found out that cannabidiol can help children with epilepsy. But epilepsy is just one of many conditions that we know cannabis medicine can treat. If the world chooses to not look at all of the science, it is not ignorance—it’s negligence.”
Why such a divide between the science and the social norms, between the theory and the practice? It’s tough to say — one might find some semblance of an answer by ‘following the money’ and realizing that pharmaceutical companies were historically more interested in more, well, patent-able cures.
CBD-rich cannabis is making a comeback
Regardless of exactly why cannabis research was ignored, it’s clear that this ignorance also set back the status of cannabis cultivation. “CBD, for the last 40 years, has been bred out of cannabis because it basically curbs the high for that recreational purpose,” attested master grower George Bianchini.
It would be up to growers who knew the truth about the CBD compound to get cannabis’ CBD levels back up — even though such an undertaking wasn’t initially profitable.
According to Steven DeAngelo of the Harborside dispensary and Steephill labs, making money wasn’t their main objective: “we had a greater mission: to tell the world the truth about cannabis.”
“So what we did is we identified 10 strains of cannabis that had the highest CBD content,” DeAngelo explained. “Now we’ve bred it back into these plants, and we have an amazing set of strains of plants.”
CBD could help those with epilepsy
It’s true — the findings of Mechoulam and other researchers have finally been validated by the experiences of thousands of epileptic patients, their caregivers, and their parents.
Today CBD’s use among those with epilepsy and other seizure disorders is practically mainstream, right up there alongside the ketogenic diet (yes, it was invented as a way to manage epilepsy!) and other natural solutions.
You can read more about how the experiences of epileptic children helped speed along CBD’s acceptance here. Warning: it’s pretty bittersweet stuff.
CBD could help veterans, too (in more ways than one!)
Helping veterans reach wholeness is what we’re all about at Pavate, so it’s no surprise we’re enthusiastic about the holistic nature of CBD. As CBD Nation affirms, cannabis and its CBD content really are helping traumatized veterans get their lives back together.
And the research agrees. “CBD has beneficial potential for PTSD treatment and the 5-HT1A receptors could be a therapeutic target in this disorder,” says one study out of Brazil, while NYU professor Alexander Neumeister theorizes that CBD’s ability to “[block] endocannabinoid deactivation” could lead to a “beneficial spectrum of biological responses.”
CBD’s utility becomes even more obvious when you consider that many veterans are also at increased risk for drug overdoses. “In 2016, 64,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses,” explains Dr. Ethan Russo, a board-certified neurologist, botanist, and globally-recognized cannabis authority. “Some of those were heroin, a lot of them were fentanyl or oxycodone.” CBD could help veterans reduce their dependence on these substances by having what many experts call an ‘opioid-sparing effect.’
CBD could be more important now than ever before
Let’s face it: modern life is demanding. We deal with more pollution, more environmental toxicity, more mental stimulation, and more low-grade stress than perhaps any other generation before us has.
Might we find a sort of all-in-one antidote in CBD? According to CBD Nation, our nation — and the world — collective relief really is on the brink.