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CNN Live Event/Special
Weed 5 The CBD Craze Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired October 12, 2019 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:24]
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN HOST: It's been more than six years since our first investigation into medical marijuana. Since we first introduced you to an ingredient in the cannabis plant. Then it was a word few could even pronounce, cannabidiol, or CBD. Well, now it's part of our daily dialogue and it's ignited a multi-billion industry. And that got us wondering, has it all gone too far? So we're back on the road across the United States and around the world searching for the truth about CBD.
From oils to tinctures to lotions to lattes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We sell pretty much everything. You name it.
GUPTA: In every shape and size. For pain, for anxiety, even soft skin. This says it's for --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hangover?
GUPTA: CBD is everywhere.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's even in the water. It's in coffee. As you walk down the street you can see CBD signs everywhere.
GUPTA: We know it won't get you high, but we still don't know much more. Research is slim.
Hi, sweetheart.
Yet success stories are not.
PAIGE FIGI, CHARLOTTE'S MOTHER: She was dying. She was not going to live long.
GUPTA: Lives changed for the best, but now we are also learning about lives that were changed for the worst.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Experts are warning about a spice product that is being sold at local smoke shops. The concern centers around CBD oil.
GUPTA: You thought you might die?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Honestly, yes.
GUPTA: What you thought was harmless could be dangerous.
Is the CBD supply chain safe?
And what's legal could be illegal. What you need to know. What we wanted to make sure you knew.
This is WEED 5, THE CBD CRAZE.
As I'm driving down these Colorado roads, I realize that we should start this journey right where our first weed investigation began, back in 2013 with this family of pioneers, a band of brothers who, many think, are responsible for starting a CBD craze.
These are the Stanley brothers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sanjay.
GUPTA: What's going on, brothers?
When we first introduced you to them back in 2013 --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm Joel.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm Josh.
GUPTA: They were young, unknown and struggling with a new business.
Now everywhere you guys go there's cameras chasing you.
Now, June 2019 they're a bit older, more experienced and very rich. Their CBD based cannabis company is now a marijuana empire, publicly traded and worth an estimated $2 billion.
Has it affected you?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're able to drive cars now that will actually get to where we're going.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's true.
GUPTA: Back then they were growing 600 pounds of medical marijuana a year on less than an acre.
It's a Greenhouse one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Greenhouse one.
GUPTA: Wow.
Betting the farm on THC and on the side experimenting with something few had considered.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's nothing like this in the world. This plant's 21 percent CBD and less than 1 percent THC.
GUPTA: Initially many wondered who would want a strain of marijuana that doesn't get you high. Remember, CBD is the non-psychoactive part of the plant. But Josh and his brothers knew even then that this had potential.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This area without putting it lightly is the future of medical marijuana.
GUPTA: Something the world would soon learn from a little girl named Charlotte. She has been called patient zero for the CBD craze.
FIGI: Probably the most important thing I'll ever do was to help my own child and then share that information, help others.
GUPTA: Born with a rare form of epilepsy called Gervais syndrome, Charlotte had a seizure every 30 minutes, every one potentially fatal. When nothing helped --
[21:05:03]
FIGI: This is Charlotte's Web.
GUPTA: Her parents gave Charlotte the Stanley CBD oil.
FIGI: She didn't have a seizure that day, and then she didn't have one the next day, and then the next day. I just thought, this is insane.
GUPTA: That was six years ago.
DR. DONALD ABRAMS, CANNABIS RESEARCHER: That, I think, really catapulted CBD into the national limelight as the most favored cannabinoid.
GUPTA: Cannabis researcher Dr. Donald Abrams believes that's when the CBD craze began.
ABRAMS: It was sort of under the table until Charlotte Figi and Sanjay Gupta got together and threw it into the public domain.
GUPTA: The Stanleys and their special CBD strain became famous.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Charlotte's an explorer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've been contacted by thousands of families.
GUPTA: All of a sudden everyone wanted the thing that had helped that little girl.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Jared Stanley and his brothers can't grow the plants fast enough.
GUPTA: And that third of an acre that I walked on more than six years ago has been replaced.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now it's almost 800 acres.
GUPTA: This has got to be one of the fastest growing things that I think I've seen. I mean, in any kind of industry.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My brother Jared who runs the entire agricultural division, the guy, he hasn't slept in seven years.
GUPTA: As the Stanley's empire grew, so did the country's interest in CBD. A recent poll shows that two out of three Americans now know what CBD is, and one out of seven use it.
I'm here in downtown New York City, which is like a lot of cities around the country. There are a ton of stores here selling CBD products. So, I'm going to talk to somebody who's been following the CBD craze very closely.
Hey, Lisa.
LISA GILL, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, CONSUMER REPORTS: Hey, how are you.
GUPTA: Good. How are you doing?
GILL: Nice to see you.
GUPTA: Good to see you. Thanks for making some time.
GILL: Yes.
GUPTA: Lisa Gill is an investigative reporter for "Consumer Reports." That's the bible for mainstream consumer products, an unexpected place to read about CBD.
GILL: There are thousands upon thousands of products across the United States on store shelves and not even counting what's online.
GUPTA: Mints, lotions, oils, bath balms, gummies, popcorn, what is this? Even -- looks like a joint.
GILL: Yes, and it smells like marijuana. Smell that.
GUPTA: I mean, I feel like I would totally get busted.
GILL: I think probably I would, too.
GUPTA: I swear, Officer, it's CBD. It's totally -- all kidding aside, this is where it gets a little confusing. For decades cannabis, including CBD, has been illegal federally. That all seemed to change with the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill which technically made growing hemp with CBD and less than .3 percent THC legal, or at least that's what most people think.
GILL: Even though it makes CBD federally legal, it allows the states to decide whether or not they're going to permit sales of it or permit farmers to grow it. So in my opinion it's very confusing for individuals to try to understand, well, what is my state doing? What's even crazier is that lots of retailers sell it anyway. So you might walk into a store and just think, oh, it must be legal because it's here. In my personal 15 years of covering pharmaceutical medications, over-the-counter medications and supplements, there is not one compound like CBD.
GUPTA: Yet despite the confusion, people and companies are willing to take the chance. There's so much money to be made. The U.S. CBD market hit an estimated $531 million in 2018. And experts believe it could hit $22 billion by 2022. All because of those seven brothers and that one little girl. But with success comes new concerns.
JOSH STANLEY, DIRECTOR OF NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, CHARLOTTE'S WEB: Any time a craze comes out, you know, you have everybody trying to jump in the boat. That can be a little bit dangerous.
GUPTA: That side of the story when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:13:03]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's with the hold-up? It's been like two months now.
CHRIS CHRISTIE, FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR: Sir, because --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's very well-documented.
CHRISTIE: These are complicated issues.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's very simple.
GUPTA: CBD did seem so simple then. It was 2014 when we first started covering the case of Vivian Wilson, a New Jersey toddler with seizures just like Charlotte Figi.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please don't let my daughter die, Governor.
GUPTA: Her father wanted some of Charlotte's oil to help his daughter, to save her life.
MEGHAN WILSON, VIVIAN'S MOTHER: It's a horrible thing to have to see your daughter suffer like this.
GUPTA: After losing the fight to access CBD because of then Governor Christie's medical marijuana laws.
CHRISTIE: It will not happen on my watch ever.
GUPTA: The family moved to Colorado.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on in.
GUPTA: To legally access the CBD oil the Stanleys had used with Charlotte, now called Charlotte's Web. We were there in their new house for Vivian's first dose. 2014.
WILSON: We came out here for CBD and you want to believe that it's going to be the cure.
GUPTA: Is this her?
WILSON: Yes.
GUPTA: I'm excited to see her.
2019 when we arrived back in Denver to see the Wilsons again, we quickly learned that Vivian had tried many different kinds of CBD and none of them had been a cure.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.
GUPTA: How are you?
WILSON: We moved two-thirds of the way across the country for CBD which is like something that you can like buy in your butter now.
GUPTA: Is it all good?
WILSON: I don't think so. I think there's a lot of misinformation.
GUPTA: What you doing here?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.
GUPTA: Hi.
Turns out Vivian's experience with what seemed to work miracles for some was not miraculous for her.
WILSON: We saw this like initial improvement and things were good. The more we were increasing her CBD, the more seizures she started having at night, up to like 40 a night. And we just couldn't figure out what it was.
GUPTA: There's no evidence that CBD caused these seizures but clearly it was no longer working for her.
[21:15:03]
DR. KELLY NUFF, NEUROLOGIST: It wasn't the benefit that they were necessarily seeking.
GUPTA: Dr. Kelly Nuff, Vivian's neurologist from Children's Hospital in Denver, remembers those early years for the Wilsons.
NUFF: When a new medicine is started we may see benefit for a couple of months, sometimes six months, 12 months, and then the benefit may gradually go away. And we don't fully understand why that is.
WILSON: One day I just looked at Brian and I said, like, you know, she just seized all night long. And I said, it's the CBD, I'm done. We stopped and she never had another focal seizure again at night in her sleep.
GUPTA: It was the exact opposite of what we found just 60 miles away. When we arrived at the Figi's doorstep -- FIGI: Sanjay, welcome back.
GUPTA: Hey, Charlotte. Hey, sweetheart. Do you remember me? I think that's a yes, maybe.
It was more than we expected and it was more than Paige had ever allowed herself to hope for. You're walking pretty good, sweetheart.
FIGI: I can't imagine back then seeing her at 12 years old. What that would look like. She was dying. She was not going to live long.
GUPTA: How is Charlotte doing?
FIGI: She's good. She's stable. And she doesn't take any medications, just this oil that she's been using for more than half of her life.
GUPTA: But why did CBD work so well for Charlotte but not for Vivian?
NUFF: What is different about the children who responded to CBD from those who didn't? So I'm wondering if there is some honeymoon effect there as well.
ABRAMS: There is a suspicion that maybe it works by increasing the blood level of the anti-seizure medicine that the children were already on.
GUPTA: Some think this honeymoon period that kids like Vivian experienced might be explained by her liver.
Good job.
ABRAMS: CBD works in the liver, in the enzymes that break down other prescription medicines, and CBD inhibits those enzymes so that they don't break down pharmaceuticals to the extent that they should be broken down allowing them to get a higher level and perhaps more effective or perhaps more toxic.
GUPTA: The fact that CBD can affect your liver enzymes and change the way drugs interact with your body could potentially be very dangerous. 60 percent of medications are broken down in the liver by a group of enzymes that could be affected by CBD use. They include drugs you might use every day, antibiotics, antihistamines, anti-depressants.
ABRAMS: It's not entirely benign, and that's one of my concerns about the widespread use of CBD.
GUPTA: That's medicine in that bag?
ABRAMS: That's what I think. Trying to prove it.
GUPTA: When I first met Donald Abrams four years ago he was on the cutting edge of cannabis research. So much promise then, but he says not much progress now. He does still believe in the potential healing power of marijuana but is concerned about CBD alone. ABRAMS: The CBD craze that we're in I think is unprecedented really
in the history of medicine. It's a compound that has gotten way ahead of any research to support the claims that are being made.
GUPTA: Abrams was part of the team of doctors in 2017 with the National Academy of Sciences that did what is considered the most comprehensive review of all the studies done on the benefits of cannabis.
ABRAMS: There are only about five in the medical literature, studies looking at the therapeutic benefits of CBD.
GILL: Not only are there very few studies, the studies that we have are not very good quality.
GUPTA: And there's hardly any research at all for the benefit of all those wellness products in stores.
GILL: There's very little for these but the potential side effects particularly for low doses episodically is pretty low.
GUPTA: Might help, can't hurt, why not? That's why so many people use CBD and it's something we've heard for years since our investigation first began. And now as we keep digging, we're learning that it could sometimes hurt.
That story when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:23:29]
GUPTA: In life everyone has days they wish they could just forget. For college junior Jay Jenkins, that day was May 8th, 2018.
You're sitting there in the passenger's seat just like you are now.
JAY JENKINS, TAINTED CBD VICTIM: Right, just like I am now. My buddy asks if I had ever tried CBD oil. So I said no. I wasn't really interested in it. Why would I? And he asked a few more times and eventually I gave in and said, sure, you know, I'll try it.
GUPTA: They drove to a convenience store and bought a CBD product labeled YOLO. YOLO stands for "you only live once."
Why did you do it?
JENKINS: I didn't think there was any risk in trying it. I had never heard of anybody having any negative effects from it so I thought that I had nothing to lose. I took two puffs off of it, next thing I know I'm feeling crazy and not thinking straight, not being able to move.
GUPTA: Within seconds Jay appeared to have lost consciousness and started to have frightening hallucinations. His friend drove him to Lexington Medical Center where he started having seizures.
JENKINS: On the Glasgow coma scale they said that I scored a three.
GUPTA: So 15 is basically normal and three is brain dead essentially.
JENKINS: Yes, sir.
GUPTA: You thought you might die?
JENKINS: Honestly, yes.
[21:25:01]
At the time, yes, I was seeing all this crazy stuff going on in my head, all these crazy hallucinations going on. I thought that I was in hell and that I was already dead.
GUPTA: What did the doctors say to you? What do you remember?
JENKINS: They said that if I had gotten there much later then I wouldn't have been able to survive.
GUPTA: He recovered physically from the trauma of it all, but make no mistake, he is still suffering mentally and asking lots of questions.
What was in this CBD oil? What got him so sick? Isn't CBD supposed to be safe?
What Jay would soon learn is that around the same time people 2,000 miles away in Salt Lake City, Utah, had also been getting sick from a similar substance.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Experts are warning about a spice product that is being sold at local smoke shops. The concern centers around a product labeled as CBD oil.
GUPTA: People started calling Utah's Poison Control Center and showing up in the emergency rooms saying they had used a liquid CBD oil.
Barbara Insley Crouch, executive director of Poison Control, remembers that very first call.
BARBARA INSLEY CROUCH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF POISON CONTROL, UTAH: One of our specialists said to me, you know what, this is really odd. You know, I have this case. This doc called me about it and sort of described that this was supposedly CBD they vaped.
GUPTA: As more calls came in, Crouch knew something was wrong.
CROUCH: First of all, CBD is the non-psychoactive component of the cannabis plant, right? So the first thing we said is, wait a minute, this is not consistent with CBD. I contacted the health department, said something's going on here. I don't know what it is. This doesn't make sense, but something is going on.
GUPTA: Everything pointed to the one thing most patients had in common, they had used a counter fit product labeled YOLO, CBD oil similar to the one Jay took. So Crouch went to a local smoke shop to obtain an unopened bottle for the police.
CROUCH: The gentleman showed me the product and he asked me what my tolerance for getting high was. It was clear to me that the overall intent was not necessarily therapeutic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: product in the bottle something that's from an accredited laboratory or is this something that's made in somebody's garage?
GUPTA: Agent Christopher L. Scholls with the State Bureau of Investigation was assigned to the case as part of a newly created task force.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the early phases we were just seeking to collect the samples, get them to the lab and determine what the substance actually was. When we had these tested by the state crime lab, there was absolutely no CBD in the actual bottles. It was entirely a force (INAUDIBLE) compound.
ROBERTA HOARTH, EPIDEMIOLOGIST, CDC: That's a synthetic cannabinoid that has been associated with fatalities in Europe.
GUPTA: Eventually the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got involved. Roberta Hoarth is an epidemiologist there.
HOARTH: We were fortunate, you know, in this cluster that we didn't detect any fatalities.
GUPTA: When you talked to the victims did you tell them what you guys had found?
HOARTH: They were quite angry. They weren't expecting that when they walk into a shop that they're going to get a product that has been tainted.
GUPTA: In the end, law enforcement was unable to pinpoint where these toxic products were coming from.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So ultimately with this we were never able to find out exactly who it was that was making it, distributing it. No criminal charges were filed.
GUPTA: And that is a consequence of this CBD craze. In the middle of this circus countless people got sick and the people to blame simply disappeared.
JENKINS: After it's all said and done, it shocked me, too, that such a simple thing did so much damage to me, almost killed me.
GILL: That is not what should be happening to a product that you just buy, you know, at any store. That's unconscionable.
GUPTA: And potentially just the beginning.
GILL: This issue could become worse, much worse before it gets better. That's what's really scary. GUPTA: So how can this happen? That when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:30:00]
GUPTA: Vaping CBD, it's one of the most popular ways to take it. Thirty percent of CBD users do it, Jay Jenkins did it, most of the Utah victims did it. And it turns out, vaping, is likely what made their tainted CBD, so much more dangerous.
DR. MICHELLE PEACE, FORENSIC SCIENTIST & TOXICOLOGIST, VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY: When we're talking about positive fix for something like CBD and you're inhaling it by vaping it, that's probably going to be an effective delivery system.
GUPTA: I traveled to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, to meet researcher, Michelle Peace. She's investigating vaping during the CBD craze.
PEACE: But if e-liquid happens to be tainted, you're also increasing the very rapid response of whatever it's adulterated with.
GUPTA: Studies show that in 10 minutes alone, almost half the CBD is absorbed, so that means you'll feel the effects so much faster than anything else, but if it's a tainted product, that's when it gets dangerous, even deadly.
PEACE: People are getting hurt. There's been a rash of poisonings from adulterated products. We have seen outbreaks in Atlanta, we've seen them in the mid-Atlantic. And so, while they're isolated, it's a rash. It's symptomatic of something.
GUPTA: Something that Peace began looking into in 2017. When she started to hear rumblings about problems with vape pens and CBD.
So, one of the places you decided to look, were these drug forums?
PEACE: Right. So, we started monitoring what people were saying about electronic cigarettes.
GUPTA: Peace started reading online posts and receiving alarming calls from people who thought they had been vaping CBD.
[21:35:03] PEACE: He was a little bit scared, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, audio/visual differences, right? Maybe slightly hallucinogenic. The issue was that, it was not the experience he was anticipating how to use CBD.
GUPTA: So, what was it? Well, for Peace, there was only one way to find out.
PEACE: So, this is my research lab.
GUPTA: Do you call it the vape lab? Is that what happens?
PEACE: Well, originally, we called it the vape lab.
GUPTA: Now, this is fascinating. Professor Peace wanted to know what was actually in the substance people were complaining about, but also better understand how it would've been ingested into the body.
PEACE: We vape this for about how long we would expect the vapor to inhale. And so, the drugs that are going to be in this aerosol will adhere to that tiny fiber. So, we are able to directly take that fiber and extract the drug off of that fiber and analyze it.
GUPTA: And when they did, they didn't find any CBD. None.
PEACE: It had a different synthetic cannabinoid in it, one that sent people to the emergency rooms, is known to have killed people, and we found some products that had that, plus dextromethorphan, which is the active ingredient in over-the-counter cough syrup.
GUPTA: It's certainly not anyone was expecting. Problem is, that as things stand now, when you go buy CBD, things are not always what they seem. In 2017, as Peace was doing her work, so was another group of scientists. They had randomly selected 80 CBD products and sent them to labs, then they were blindly tested, meaning the testers didn't know the product they were testing at the time.
It was the worst results I have seen. Only three quarters of the products were mislabeled. Some had significant THC, some had no CBD. There was no consistency whatsoever.
LISA GILL, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, CONSUMER REPORTS: Alarm bells started going off.
GUPTA: That's a couple of years ago. Has it gotten better?
GILL: We can't tell if it's gotten better.
GUPTA: As I uncover these stories and these studies of tainted products, of mislabeled products, I couldn't help but wonder how could this happen and who's supposed to be in charge? I soon learned, like so much of this, it's not simple.
You see, when CBD was illegal, federally, the Drug Enforcement Agency was in charge. But remember that Farm Bill of 2018 I told you about? Well, that made CBD hemp technically legal. And that's where things got confusing again.
GILL: The Farm Bill also gave each state the ability to regulate it. And every state is in a different phase of regulating how they deal with CBD. And at the same time, the Food & Drug administration is trying to understand, do we regulate it only as a pharmaceutical? Can we regulate it only as a supplement? Can we regulate it as an OTC or something else?
GUPTA: When people say it feels like the Wild West, this is what they mean, and it's going to stay the Wild West until the FDA can answer these questions, which could take a lot of time, time the public, might not have. Is the CBD supply chain, safe?
PEACE: There are pockets or leans in the supply chain that, right now, probably cannot be trusted. Identifying those lanes, good luck.
GUPTA: So, what do you do now? Well, there are scientists who think they have a better path forward, so we're taking a trip across the pond, when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:40:00]
GUPTA: We've flown across the Atlantic Ocean here, to the United Kingdom, and then drove 2-1/2 hours outside of London, to this small town called Downham Market. It's a sleepy town, conservative, mostly elderly. It's also now a town at the center of the CBD revolution. A lot of people here didn't even realize it until, one day, they caught wind of it.
ROBERT JACKMAN, JOURNALIST, THE SPECTATOR: It was about two years ago that people had started to talk about this strange smell wafting over town.
GUPTA: The smell of marijuana, says journalist, Robert Jackman. What did people -- what were they talking about?
JACKMAN: We had people saying, it's giving them a headache. I think someone famously phoned the police.
GUPTA: Understandably. Cannabis was illegal in the U.K., but it turned out a couple of miles away, a pharmaceutical company called G.W., was given special approval to legally grow fields upon fields of medicinal cannabis.
JACKMAN: This wasn't top secret, it's not Area 51 or anything like that, but they didn't shout it from the rooftops.
GUPTA: We got a rare peak at G.W.'s first facility -- wow -- back in 2013. Now, in 2019, we've been invited back to their new one. There's a main gate up here that everyone has to clear through. You see the cameras up here, saw security dogs on patrol.
As we drive in, you can't miss the greenhouse. Some estimate it to be the biggest stash of pharmaceutical grade cannabis in the world. I met up with the founder of G.W.
Good, Doctor.
Dr. Geoffrey Guy.
DR. GEOFFREY GUY, CHAIRMAN AND FOUNDER, G.W. PHARMACEUTICALS: Lovely to see you. Guy.
GUPTA: Oh, pleasure. You've been busy.
GUY: Slightly larger than the last one you saw.
GUPTA: Right. Yes. The first time I visited you, I walked into a greenhouse that was about one acre, one football field. What are we looking at here?
GUY: Forty-seven acres. This facility, at any one time, I think, has just under 300,000 plants in it. So that's tens of thousands of patients.
GUPTA: In the spring of 2018, G.W. released Epidiolex. It was transformative because it was the first time the FDA had approved a medication derived from the cannabis plant. It went through clinical trials, it went through peer review and lots of safety testing, none of which is seen with the CBD sold as a supplement.
[21:45:09] It's an issue that irks Dr. Guy.
GUY: The reputation of safety and efficacy of a product could be tainted by other products representing themselves to be the same.
GUPTA: Is the pharma route, the only route that this should be going?
GUY: It's the only route that we're involved in.
GUPTA: A route they tightly control from the moment the first seed is planted, starting with a pesticide-free greenhouse.
GUY: In terms of controlling pests, we use other pests to do that. So, we have little sachets on the plant which contain mites, and those mites have an appetite for some of the pests.
GUPTA: And once the plant is harvested, it makes its way three hours southwest, to the Kent Science Park.
DAVID COOPER, HEAD OF MANUFACTURING, G.W. PHARMACEUTICALS: I know you want to see the vault.
GUPTA: It's literally a vault.
COOPER: It literally is a vault.
GUPTA: There's a backdoor here.
COOPER: Yes.
GUPTA: All right.
David Cooper is in charge of doing something no one else in the world has quite figured out yet.
COOPER: We have pellets for cannabidiol.
GUPTA: Turning that CBD plant into an FDA-approved drug.
COOPER: This is the extraction room.
GUPTA: You're trying to extract the medicine, the active ingredients out of the plant?
COOPER: Yes.
I would say it's very challenging. The company has been in existence for 20 years. So, I think, that journey is quite a long journey.
GUPTA: Along the way, they figured out how to start with the plant, break it down, extract just the CBD, formulate it to the right dosage, then bottle it.
So, I guess it's fair to say there wasn't a book that said, hey, if you want to turn this, into this --
COOPER: No.
GUPTA: -- follow these steps.
COOPER: Definitely not.
GUPTA: And then, they still have to prove that it is safe and effective, the holy grail of drug development, even if they're still not sure exactly how CBD works.
GUY: What we now have is regulatory recognition of the benefits and certain conditions of these medicines. We have to evaluate better how they work, under what circumstances, what might make them work better. The important thing is to provide that evidential proof. You have to do a search.
GUPTA: And that, that point is probably the biggest difference between what is happening here versus the CBD craze, sweeping the United States.
So many of the CBDs, sort of, people that we talked to say, farmer routes, expensive, it takes forever. We know this stuff works, it's safe. Why do we have to wait for pharma?
PEACE: Because we've had bad players. We really have to do something harder about this than what we currently are.
GUPTA: G.W. is hoping to develop more CBD and cannabis-based drugs, for everything, from anxiety to autism, and many others are trying as well.
DR. YASMIN HURD, DIRECTOR OF THE ADDICTION INSTITUTE, MOUNT SINAI: That's what we want. CBD for FDA, as a medicine.
GUPTA: Mount. Sinai's Dr. Yasmin Hurd, has been an impassioned leader, developing CBD products to help address one of the most concerning issues of our time, the opioid epidemic.
GUPTA: You think CBD could be one of those tools?
HURD: Absolutely. Do I think that it can help everything in society? No. Do I think it's a wonder drug? No. But, do I think that it can alleviate certain disorders? Absolutely. And that's why we need to find out.
GUPTA: Through research which, for years, had been near impossible.
HURD: The Farm Bill now allows us to work with hemp-derived CBD. That has been extremely helpful or else we would never be able to conduct the large clinical trials that are needed.
DR. DONALD ABRAMS, PROFESSOR OF CLINICAL MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISO: Now, there's a whole new wave of CBD research that is being funded.
GUPTA: The Stanley brothers are among them. While proof that cannabis works, isn't yet required for CBD to be sold in stores or online, they want the data regardless.
JOEL STANLEY, CHAIRMAN, CHARLOTTE'S WEB: We live in a world, in a system that needs scientific validation and a process before you can make any claims. So, we have to go responsibly about it.
GUPTA: Responsibly. Because if you get it wrong, people like Jay, get sick and nearly die. Responsibly, because, remember, a little girl, Charlotte, her life depends on it. That, when we come back.
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[21:50:00]
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GUPTA: It's August 2019, at the CBD World Expo, in California.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: CBD.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: CBD.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: CBD.
GUPTA: In the months since we began our investigation, the industry seems to have gotten even bigger and dare, I say, even more outrageous; protein powders, pet supplies, even sex products.
GILL: And he's like oh, my God. I'm feeling a tingling sensation.
GUPTA: And Consumer Reports' Lisa Gill --
GILL: I'm going to fall asleep.
GUPTA: -- continues to sound the alarm for better consumer protection.
GILL: Is it legal? Does it work? And is it safe?
GUPTA: It's a message she also brought to the Food and Drug Administration, when the FDA held an open session on CBD.
GILL: Half of the people told us that they were extremely or very confident that there was a regulation in place that required their CBD to be tested for safety and accuracy by outside labs, but we know that is absolutely not true.
For the FDA to take this on, it shows that they understand that there's a regulatory, sort of, gap.
GUPTA: The FDA seemed to be listening. In the past few months, they have been demanding more accountability, going after companies that make adulterated products and companies that make unproven claims.
Do you think there is a real path for with CBD, in terms of regulation?
PEACE: Yes. But we are years from it. I would like the FDA to act faster. No doubt.
[21:55:02] GUPTA: We wanted to ask the FDA ourselves, but they declined several requests for an interview. So, for now, while we wait for answers, it's left up to individual states.
ANDREW RIGBY, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, HEMP AND MEDICAL CANNABIS: The dangers of not regulating CBD products are vast and deep.
GUPTA: Andrew Rigby runs Utah's new program for regulating CBD. After the outbreak, legislators passed a bill in 2018, requiring that CBD products be registered with the state, and manufacturers provide a certificate of analysis.
RIGBY: Every single product that is going through the registry and process with the state of Utah, is tested for the cannabinoid profiles, heavy metals, toxins and pesticides.
GUPTA: All products must include a list of ingredients and a Q.R. code or web address.
RIGBY: You could pull something off the shelf, a snap the Q.R. code, it'll take me directly to the website and have access to the certificate of analysis within a number of seconds.
GUPTA: Which brings up probably the most important thing you should do, if you're shopping for CBD.
GILL: Ask for the certificate of analysis and it shows you the amount of all the different compounds that are in the product, including THC, as well as any solvents or any other contaminants, we want that, it came out with zero. And they're right here.
We see CBD, and then we can see how much THC is present.
GUPTA: And remember, all CBD products will have, at least, trace levels of THC.
GILL: This can accumulate in a person's body.
GUPTA: Yes.
GILL: And you know this from being a physician.
GUPTA: Sure.
GILL: THC is not immediately metabolized and it can build up. And for anybody that's taking a drug test, that drug test will -- can register very low levels of THC in the body.
GUPTA: Yes. You heard that right. You could test positive for THC, even if you're just using CBD products.
GILL: The studies that we've looked at, you can see that even low levels of THC, after five days, can start to register.
GUPTA: It's another cautionary CBD tale. And yet another reason to be an educated consumer. Read the labels. Look for a certificate of analysis. And remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
They make crazy claims, that's a red flag.
GILL: Oh, walk away.
MEGHAN WILSON, MOTHER OF VIVIAN WILSON: Get set, go!
GUPTA: Walking away from CBD? It's something the Wilsons did. Remember, Vivian and her family moved across the country and changed their lives for CBD, like so many people.
VIVIAN WILSON, POSTER CHILD FOR NEW JERSEY MEDICAL MARIJUANA REFORM: Thank you.
BRIAN WILSON, FATHER OF VIVIAN WILSON, DIAGNOSED WITH DRAVET SYNDROME: Thank you.
M. WILSON: We came out here for CBD and you want to believe that it's going to be the cure.
GUPTA: And when it was clear, it wasn't a cure for Vivian, they did something still considered taboo. They started giving her THC.
B. WILSON: We would see people who'd be like, oh I don't want THC, that's bad.
M. WILSON: But we kept her on THC and she just blossomed. If we really truly want to get the full benefit of cannabis, there's just so much out there than CBD.
GUPTA: It really got us wondering, at this time, with all the attention on CBD, what about the rest of the plant? Remember, cannabis is made up of, at least, 60 potentially therapeutic chemicals called cannabinoids.
B. WILSON: I think the CBD thing did do damage to the progress of full spectrum cannabis being taken as seriously as CBD is.
JOSH STANLEY, DIRECTOR OF NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, CHARLOTTE'S WEB: THC has been demonized, once again. This word, non-psychoactive has gotten into lawmakers and everyone's heads. And so, now, it's an erroneous thought to think that CBD only is the silver bullet. It's not.
PAIGE FIGI, MOTHER OF CHARLOTTE FIGI: She's happy and outside and this is her jam.
GUPTA: And while CBD has certainly saved the life of this little girl, patient zero for the CBD craze --
Did you ever think you'd be doing this?
FIGI: Never. I never thought I'd be biking with her at 12 years old.
GUPTA: Paige is hopeful that Charlotte's story doesn't represent the end of the cannabis plant, but just the beginning.
Didn't really want to talk about the future, last time, but how about now?
FIGI: I have my hopes that we'll have just so much more data and research to pull from. Just because Charlotte uses a high CBD hemp, that doesn't mean THC is the devil.
GUPTA: There is no question cannabis and CBD can be a medicine. It's a plant that can heal, sometimes, when nothing else has.
MATT FIGI, FATHER OF CHARLOTTE FIGI: You have a little gardening here?
GUPTA: We have seen the stories. We have unearthed the research. It deserves the respect of any medicine, and the regulation. It should come with a promise that while it may not always help, it should certainly never hurt, even in the midst of a CBD craze.
[22:00:00]
