Cannabidiol in Marijuana – Untapped and Still Misunderstood by Many in Medicine

September 8, 2019 – Early this year I contacted a cannabis clinic here in Toronto to ask for advice on dealing with my osteoarthritis. I consulted with a doctor who suggested I consider taking CBD oil sublingually (under the tongue) twice a day to see if it could replace the painkillers I was using, or be combined with them to give me relief.

CBD oil is a compound containing cannabidiol which constitutes 40% of marijuana’s chemistry. It is not the psychotropic component of the plant, THC, which stands for tetrahydrocannabinol. It is THC that is associated with the smoker’s high that comes from using marijuana. The prescription recommended to me contained 98% CBD and 2% THC. Initially, I started taking about 0.6 CCs daily and worked my way up to 1.0 CC. Since I started using CBD oil my reliance on strong painkillers has greatly diminished. It has only been when I have had to travel away from Canada that I have not been able to use my medically prescribed CBD oil.

Why is that? Because marijuana use in Canada is legal for recreational purposes, and is grown for medical purposes and dispensed through government-regulated operators. When my wife and I went to a wedding in California I was unable to bring my prescription CBD oil. Instead, I found a dispensary in Santa Cruz, California, which matched my prescription so that I could continue to use it while in the United States. And before returning to Canada through Vancouver, I had to throw out the CBD oil from California to avoid the potential of being arrested for crossing back into Canada with a U.S. sourced marijuana product. It was two days before we returned to Toronto in which I had to rely on much stronger painkillers to bridge the gap. The absurdity of the regulatory environment for marijuana cannot be overstated.

When I recently spoke with my family physician about the treatment of my osteoarthritis I mentioned I was taking CBD oil daily. She responded that there was nothing in the scientific literature to validate it as a treatment. And yet I continue to run into many people who are using CBD oil to alleviate a number of conditions from osteoarthritis, to epileptic seizures, to anxiety, and PTSD.

The most commonly prescribed painkillers are extracts from plants. Coca leaves contain benzoylmethylecgonine, a natural mood elevator. Poppies contain morphine (the strongest painkiller and the principal cause of opioid addiction around the planet today). And marijuana or cannabis contains 120 chemicals known as phytocannabinoids which interact with different neural receptors in our brains to create a variety of reactions.

The problem with CBD as a medically accepted treatment today for so many different medical problems is the lack of serious research and clinical trials. But CBD oil has been reported anecdotally to be effective in treating arthritis, heart disease, Type 1 diabetes, graft-versus-host disease, and psychosis. Why the medical profession has chosen to largely ignore marijuana is a bit of a puzzle. Maybe it is because of its recreational smoking association as a substance associated with getting high.

The first human clinical trial was done in 1980 to validate CBD oil for use in treating epileptic seizures. A double-blind study using 8 volunteers who received CBD, and 8 who were given a placebo, was administered for 4-1/2 months. All 16 tolerated the CBD  with no serious side effects. Of the 8 receiving CBD, 4 were almost seizure-free, 3 showed partial improvement, and 1 demonstrated no effect. The placebo patients results showed no change in 7 and 1 with improvements.

Despite these promising results, no further human clinical trials were conducted until 2015. Since then trials using compounds from marijuana have been a confusing hodgepodge of CBD or CBD-THC treatments with little understanding of what combination of various compounds contained within the plant should be part of any test.

The ongoing prejudice against the plant because of its association with criminality has blinded the profession to its potential uses in treating so many maladies. One hopes that recreational legalization will lead to medical marijuana and CBD and CBD-THC compounds becoming mainstream. For me, I am more than convinced that the benefits I have observed from taking CBD oil are not a placebo effect.